
Class J^^M3_ 
Book_Y_Hli3 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE FAR COUNTRY 



The Far Country 



BY 



FLORENCE WILKINSON 

Author of 
Kings and Queens 




NEW YORK 

MCCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 

MCMVI 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDies Received 

^AY 9 1906 

rj- -Copyrifflbi Entry 
CLASS 'OC XXc. No. 
' ^ COPY B, 






COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY 

FLORENCE WILKINSON 

Published April, i906 



DEDICATORY 

MY FRIENDS AND BELOVEDS^ I GIVE THIS BOOK TO YOU, 
YOU THAT HAVE WARMED MEj WELCOMED ME_, KEPT ME TRUE; 
SWEETLY BELIEVED IN ME ALWAYS, NOBLY PRAISED ME, 
SEEN WHAT WAS BEST IN ME, BY YOUR LOVE UPRAISED ME. 

YOU THAT HAVE CIRCLED ME WITH YOUR SHINING FACES, 

CLOUDS OF GLORY ABOVE MY DIFFICULT PLACES, 

(God, that gave you to me, I thank Him for His graces!) 

YOU MY COMPANIONS, IN THAT FaR CoUNTRY OUR GOAL, 

this IS YOUR BOOK, BELOVEDS, MY HEART AND MY BRAIN AND 

MY SOUL. 
THE WORLD, PERHAPS, WILL FORGET OR PASS IT BY, 
DUST OF THEIR FEET, THEIR BREATH, THEIR GLANCING EYE, 
YET FROM SUCH CLAY I TOOK TO BUILD THEREBY. 
YOU, ABOVE ALL, DEAR HEART, WHO READ AND KNOW, 
ACCEPT A GIFT THE GREATEST I CAN BESTOW. 
CRITICS MAY SMILE AND TOSS THE BOOK ON THE SHELF, 
BUT YOU, DEAR HEART, SHALL SAY : " So THIS IS FLORENCE 

HERSELF." 



CONTENTS 
PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 

PAGE 

Wind-Footed Loveliness 3 

Melanie a Melancon 7 

Lettice 10 

Dancing Gavr'inay IS 

Jannik and Genevieve 16 

Monique Rose 23 

Rose Here 27 

At Sleeping Water 32 

Kismet and the King 36 

AsGARDA IN Baghdad 38 

A Girl of Lazistan 42 

Captain and King 45 

The Poet Moon 46 

Alpine Glow 47 

The Slain Ones 48 

Twilight in Italy 50 

The Unattainable 51 

Compensation 52 

The Passionate Pilgrim 54 

[yii] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

~The Heart's Country 56 

The Mountain God 57 

The Pilgrim Bell 58 

The Country That He Knew . . . . » 61 

In a Ruined Abbey 64 

The Curse on Dunoon 66 

We Were Lovers 70 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 

Sleeping Erinnys 77 

The Fugitives 80 

A Challenge 82 

As a Little Child 83 

Forerunners 84 

The Railway Yard 86 

The House to His First Mistress . . . , 89 

It Is Our Sin to Have Remembered ... 91 

The Past 92 

Recognition 93 

A Single Mind 94 

The Supreme Forgiveness 95 

The Sorrowful Stream ...... 96 

Theophany 97 

The Vain Prince 98 

The Wedding Guest 99 

Introspect 101 

The Dying Child 103 

[viii] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Unremembered 104 

After Victory 106 

Beyond the Spectrum 107 

The Child That Once You Were . . . . 109 

The Diary 110 

Heimweh Ill 

The Eldest Born 113 

The Dream-Child 116 

The Solitary 118 

They That Stand on the Edge 122 

The Tortured Millions 124 

The Unknown Quantity 126 

Genius 128 

The Prophet , . 130 

Extinction 132 

The Traveller 133 

White Nights 134 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 

The Cloud and the Mountain 139 

To Harriet 142 

Before the Dawn 144 

To A Wood Path 146 

The Lamp of the Genii 148 

The Borderland 151 

Vagrants 152 

Low Tide 154 

[ix] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Waking Song 156 

Tension 158 

Water-Fowl in the Fog 159 

Wounded , l6l 

The Grebe l63 

The Heart of the Woods 165 

Purple Crocuses in the Val Bregaglia . . l67 
Rondels 

The East 168 

The Bird l69 

Sermons IN Trees 170 

Sea-Blood 172 

The Call of Spring 175 

The Glacier 177 

The House of Great Content 179 

The Far Country 181 

Indian Summer 184 

The Soul of the Goldenrod 187 

Song of the Saw-Mill 190 

At Dead of Night 197 

After the Long Rain 199 

The Wood-Spell 201 



PART FOUR: YOU AND I 

I. The Pine-Tree Lovers 219 

11. The Simple-Hearted Days .... 220 

III. Childhood 220 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

IV. The Fugue 221 

V. After Long Absence 222 

VI. The Cross of Joy 222 

VII. A City Dweller 223 

VIII. And One Stands Out 224 

IX. Upon the Fringes of the Forest . . 224 

X. As IN THE Endless Night .... 225 



The Pure in Heart — A Dramatic Interlude 229 



[xi] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



WIND-FOOTED LOVELINESS 



There's a llttle land of waterfalls I love, I love. 

{Oh, you girl with the wind in your hairl^ 
Fantastic Fedoz a torrent of snow 
And Piz Corvatch high up in the air. 
Like the bubble a god might blow; 
And Orlegna that we looked for all the tossing after- 
noon 
Till the mists drifted wide and the glacier died, 

A pink flame soaring up to the moon. 



{Oh, you girl with the foam in your hair!) 
There was Monte Muretto a dazzling stiletto. 
And Fex shivering on her white stair, 
Dripping-foot, wind-blown and aflare. 
Till the blue hills rushed together in the vast prime- 
val weather 
Like the prows of fabled ships when the dying sun 
dips 
To the night, underneath Lunghino's feather. 
[S] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



There's a little land of waterfalls I love^ I love. 

One waterfall only a voice. 

Flung up to the peaks;, a voice. 

{Oh J you girl with the clouds in your hair, 

A darling, a splendour, a dare!) 
How the ecstatic memory stings 
Of Caroggia's misty wings 

And the chasm magnificent where that whirling white- 
ness went. 

Courier to the breathless lips of kings. 



(^Oh, you girl with the sunset in your hair. 
How I wanted you, wanted you there!) 
By the brook of Surlej j ust a lapf ul of spray 
And a curveting gleam in the air: 

And Orlegna that we looked for all Apollo's after- 
noon 
Till the hunter-twilight came and the glacier broke 
to flame, 
Fading up to the crescent of the moon. 



There's a little land of waterfalls I love, I love. 
{Oh, you girl with the stars in your hair. 
How I kissed you and revelled in you there!) 

Heroic, afraid, how I held you undismayed 

[4] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



While the reapers carolled homeward from Campfer. 
And Orlegna that we looked for all the wreathed 

afternoon 
Floated oiF upon the dark while you whispered, 

" Hark, Hark 
To the drunken music of the reapers by the 

moon ! " 



There's a little land of waterfalls I love, I love; 
Swift white Mera runs below, white Bondasca lifts 
above. 
{Oh, you girl with the kisses in your hair. 
How I loved you and loved you there!) 
I am calling you still from your fountain-singing hill, 

A darling, splendour, a dare. 
There are grey leagues and abysses between me and 

your kisses 
And Orlegna that we looked for all that vanished 

afternoon 
Till the zodiac darkness came and the glacier's globe 
of flame 
Was a sister to the circlet of the moon. 



{Ohj you girl with the glory in your hair. 
Do you listen, remember and care?) 

[5] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



It is ly the empyreal angel of your youth. 
Smitten now and bruised by unimaginable ruth. 
With a helmeted sky-coloured Vision riding down 

despair ; 
When I lay me prone in the mould, weary and beaten 

and old. 
Will you come and whisper to me softly there. 
In the autumn-leaf of golden Castasegna, 
When it haunts me, — the aerial wistfulness of Or- 

legna, — 
You, imperishable fragment, torment, lure and quest. 
Whisper to me in the darkness with your lips on my 

poor breast, — 
Did you find that falling water under some 

Pierian moonf 
Was the look of her sweet as the sound of her Was 
That miraculous afternoon^ 



[6] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



MELANIE A MELANCON 



O, Melanie a Melan9on, 
You used to love the free hillside 
Where purple-skirted shadows glide; 
The billowing of the green marsh-grass 
When winds a-vagabonding pass. 



You used to love the tinging, cool 
Plash of the heron in the pool 
Of the wide roslands by Bel'Ile, 
Taking his lonely evening meal. 



O, Melanie a Melan^on, 

How well, how well you used to know 

Fleet things that fly, sweet things that blow. 



The roving warbler joyed to fare 
With you along the river-stair, 

[7] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



The rippling^ rushing amber stream 
In cedar gloom, afoam, agleam; 



The tented trees in nightly camp. 
The firefly's wandering faery lamp, 
The long moan of the houseless tide. 
The golden eagle's cliff-born pride. 



The saintly hours of the night 
With star-girt brow, that walk in white. 
All these you cherished when I knew 
Springtide, the northland, love, and you. 



O, Melanie a Melan9on, 

Where the blue juniper stands tall. 

Your house is very dark and small. 



The loyal children of the field 
Linger about your quiet bield. 
Brave yarrow and remembering rue 
And meadow-sweet, for love of you. 

[8] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



When April's tremulous twilights fill 
The piping swamps, your mouth is still. 
The troops of sunrise, bannered red^ 
Unminded march above your head. 



Your folded glance will never swerve 
To watch the sea-gull's splendid curve. 
Nor heed you any more at all 
The hill-bird's cry, the yorlin's call. 



O, Melanie a Melan9on, 
Have you found life so passing sweet 
Within that chamber's dumb retreat .f* 
Or, should God point you to the key 
Would you return to spring and me, 
Melanie a Melangon? 



[9] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



LETTICE 



IN the vale of the Cornwallis 

Lettice lies asleep. 
And the tides forever moving 

All about her creep. 
And the five sea-rivers flowing 
Day and nighty keep coming_, going. 
But they rouse not little Lettice 

From her sleep. 

Through the marshes of Cornwallis, 

Through the rusty red, 
Slips the sea his shining fingers 

All about her bed. 
And the zigzag birds are stringing 
Up above the bleak Cornwallis, 
And the sad brown grasses singing 
Round her head. 

Little Lettice was my sister. 
And we used to play 
[10] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Gn the hills and by the beaches, 

In the salt sea-spray. 
Lettice loved the squirrel's chirring 
And the crumpled leaves a-stirring 
In the vale of the Cornwallis 

All the day. 



Bushy-Tail is now beside her, 

Hands upon his breast 
As I crossed them when he followed 

Lettice to her rest. 
Soon the young corn will be shooting 
In the vale of the Cornwallis, 
And the white-throats will be fluting 

By their nest. 



Soon sea-lavender will purple 

Avon's reedy shore. 
And the grey marsh-rosemary 
Fill the dikes once more. 
Lettice, Lettice, will you listen 
When the buds begin to glisten 
In the vale of the Cornwallis 
By your door ? 

[11] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Lettice, like the flowers^ is sleeping 

Underneath the snow. 
But I think that she will waken 

When the twin-flowers blow. 
And that we shall roam together 
Through the vale of the Cornwallis 
As we used in sweet blue weather 
Long ago. 



[12] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



DANCING GAVR'INAY 

(Druid) 

1 LIE in the shadow, I melt with the foam; 

Menhir and cromlech 

At lone Plouharnec, 

In those vast ruined porches 

I lift my pale torches. 
But the wind and the wave are my house and my home. 



I am the fairy Gavr'inay 

Of the isles that march on the sea. 
The glistening ghouls 
Of the green sea-pools 

They laugh and scatter for me. 
I sleep in the caves 
Or I run with the waves 

From Loctudy to L'lle Tudy. 



I lie in the shadow, I melt with the foam; 
My words are sea-birds that call as they scurry ; 
My feet are light billows that dance in their hurry. 
Armel, get thee hence in haste to thy home! 

[13] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



I am the fairy Gavr'inaj. 

Are you sick for sight of the broom? 

Dip your hands in my hair 

Streaming bright on the air; 
It is gold of the prickly bloom. 

Late, late it grows 

And the black wind blows 
Where the Bocks of the Dead Men boom. 



There is never a secret your heart has known 
But my smiling lips can tell. 

In the bosom of night 

I am dear delight^ 
list to the mariner's knell! 

The petrels skim 

And the land shows dim 
From Plouharnec to Ploermel. 



Armel, the little lips of thy child. 
In his cradle at home are blowing thee kisses. 
Say, hast thou forgotten thy wife's caresses. 
Firelight and lamplight and homelier blisses 
For Gavr'inay, Gavr'inay, thing of the wild? 

[14] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



I am the fairy Gavr'inay ; 

I dance on the darkening sea. 

When the loud rocks roar 

On the whitening shore 
I will swing my lamps for thee. 

And the savage fell 

By Ploermel 
Shall ring with the voice of me. 



The Rocks of the Dead are smothered in fleece, 
Mother Anhou is shearing her sheep, 

A wreck, a rvreck. 

By Plouharnec ! 
Let the hell toll long and deep. 

Yet ah, nay, nay, 

*Tis Gavr'inay ' 

Has cradled his soul to sleep. 



I lie in the shadow, I melt with the foam; 
Menhir and cromlech 
At lone Plouharnec, — 
In those vast ruined porches 
I lift my pale torches, 
But the wind and the wave are my house and my home. 

[15] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



JANNIK AND GENEVIEVE 

(Breton) 

oUN drips down in a well of gold; 
Flying geese like a line enscrolled, 
Wild black writing across the gold. 



Mother, will he not come to-night, 

Jannik, Jannik? 
(The sun-burnt sound of his biniou; 
Oh, the dim sweet hour when he came to woo !) 
He swung the scythe through the wet luzerne 
And he sang to his swathe at the shining turn; 
(Oh, the words of the song that he made me 
learn!) 

It is long since he came; 

I will call his name: 

Jannik, Jannik! 



Sunset rusting the Druid fell 
And the little sea-pools by Tregastel: 
Cromlechs grim on the Druid fell. 

[16] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Little daughter^ listen to me^ 

Beloved one! — 
(Matin and vesper and holy bell. 
Let him fast and pray in his tower cell;) 
He is now a priest that was Jannik, — 
Cloak and cowl and the shaven cheek; 
(I have sealed his lips that he dare not speak.) 

A little regret, 

And then to forget. 

Beloved one! 



Climbing the cliiFs of Dead Men's Bay 
Rock-hewn desolate Saint Herve, 
Finger of God over Dead Men's Bay. 



Little daughter, we dance to-night 

In Hustephan. 
(Jannik the peasant never again 
Will pipe to her, come to her, over the fen,) 
Little daughter, they dance the gavotte. 
Young Corentin and Bernadotte. 
(She closes her eyes and answers not.) 

Candles and wine 

And the flame of the pine 

In Rustephan. 

[17] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Over the length of the languid land 
Twilight laid like a quiet hand; 
Step of the tide to the tremulous land. 



Mother^ my little hands are cold^ 

The dark has come. 
( Jannik alone in the belfry tower ! 
Mary^ have pity ! This was the hour.) 
Fling me away that gown of green. 
With its trailing length and its hateful sheen, 
(Oh, the sarrasin fields where the children glean !) 

Shut me the door 

And speak no more. 

The dark has come. 



Gossamer night like a web of black ; 
Flash of foam on the west wind's track; 
Star of Saint Herve piercing the black. 



Mother, I am too tired to-night. 

Too tired to sleep. 
(I am sick of the swish of the dancers' feet 
And the maniac measure the pipes repeat.) 
Sing me a song of the Washers white, 

[18] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Women three in the house of night. 

(They are washing for me in the grey moonlight.) 

Sing me a song, 

Long and long; 

Sing me to sleep. 



Deep and deep is the bosom of sleep; 
Fields of the poppy where peasants reap. 
Trill of the skylark thrilling her sleep. 



Little daughter, my Genevieve! 

She is asleep. 
(The pitiful hair spread out like grain. 
The wasted hand on the counterpane!) 
Never and never a peasant can 
Wed with the house of Rustephan. 
(Oh, the heart of a maid and the heart of a man !) 

I will kiss her brow 

And leave her now. 

She is asleep. 



Folded hands of Genevieve; 
Tides that understand and grieve 
All night long for Genevieve. 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Father-in-God, when the sea goes out 

By Tregastel, 
(Oh^ the marble calm of the buried face, 
The vanished voice and the empty place !) 
When the sea goes out on the orange rocks 
And I hear the tinkle of homeward flocks, 
(What a cruel calm is the calm that mocks !) 

I hear, I hear. 

In the evening clear 

By Tregastel — 



Angelus pealing from Saint Herve; 
Souls of the drowned in Dead Men's Bay 
Reaching white hands to Saint Herve. 



When the sea goes out to its mothering caves. 

To Tal-Yvern, 
(Oh, the voice of the priest that wept above her; 
The voice of Jannik, her peasant lover !) 
I hear the sound of his biniou 
And they walk in the fields as they used to do, 
(Oh, the dim sweet hour when he came to woo !) 

And the green of the sea 

Is memory to me 

At Tal-Yvern. 

[20] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Leagues of silence large and grave, 
Feathery moon that crinkles the wave; 
Liquid green and the silence grave. 



Father-in-God, when dark comes down 

On Rustephan, 
(The sleepers mutter as past each door 
My garments whisper along the floor) 
Within the shadow of the stair 
Her bier stands there, the torches flare, 
(Her face between the outspread hair) 

My tears down fall 

Upon her pall 

In Rustephan. 



Stroke of midnight from the tower; 
Sigh of a soul awake that hour ; 
Sad small star in the belfry tower. 



I kneel and ask her to forgive. 

Forgive my sin. 
Father-in-God, my tears down fall; 
(She smiles and answers not at all.) 

[21] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



That moonbeam on the floor by thee 
Lies not so straight, so white, as she, 
(So still and smiling up at me !) 
Mary in Heaven, 
Ah, seven times seven. 
Forgive my sin! 



Skylark springing above her head; 
Wrinkled splash of a poppy red ; 
Quiver of summer above her head. 



[22] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



MONIQUE ROSE 



With folded hands sits Monique Rose 
Day-long, in tranced eldering doze; 
White hair against the parchment cheek 
And thin lips shrunk in silence meek. 



Not thus her look was years ago 
When she was Rose a Jeune Comeau, 
And he who loved her sailed the main 
By Minas Rips and Pointe aux Chenes, 
And she with him from Grand Manan 
To the bleak rock of Miquelon. 



But now the kitchen pane beside 
She sees the grey-faced rain-storm stride. 
Blotting the tortuous town, the bay, 
Scattering the mowers from the hay. 
And broad-hipped women with their rakes, 
Nor heeds she how the poplar shakes. 

[23] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



For all within is warm and still, 
The house-fly burrs along the sill; 
Our Lady smiles upon the shelf. 
By pampas grass and plates of Delf, 



Just as she left them years ago, 
When she was Rose, he Jeune Comeau, 
And with the west wind whistling free 
The Marie-Belle stood out to sea. 



The fir-trees drip their purple cones 
Among the velvet graveyard stones; 
She knows the tree that marks his grave ; 
Beyond, St. Mary's turquoise wave 
Where hulking whalers lie at ease 
And mackerel sails bulge to the breeze. 



Her grandson's wife, black-eyed Jacquette, 
Hums all the day a chansonnette ; 
With babe at breast or foot on loom 
She fills with stir the homely room. 

[24] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Grandmere is simple, muttering low. 
Deaf to the folk that come and go. 
Her grandson's wife with careless hand 
Pins the lace coif and ribbon band. 



But the vague eyes of Monique Rose 
Hide clearer thoughts than Jacquette knows. 
Far journeyings to the out-seas dim 
That stretch beyond the horizon's rim; 



Fair memories of companioned years 
Before her cheeks were crossed by tears. 
And brighter than the drift-wood flame 
That freaks the chimney's blackened frame. 



After the wide, low sun has set 
And all the land is violet. 
She hears the rolling sea-gate pour. 
The shingle booming on the shore ; 
And where the mounting darkness yearns 
The Stella Maris melts and burns. 
[25] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



But when the house is fast asleep 
Does Monique Rose long vigil keep. 
Watching across her window glass 
The stars in pale procession pass. 



Nor fear nor pain her eyesight blur, 
When God's tall Angel stands by her. 
Bursting the night with fringent glow 
For Monique Rose a Jeune Comeau. 



[26] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



ROSE HERE 



On the 2nd of November, 190S, the French boat 
Vesper was wrecked on the coast of Brittany, at the 
point of Pern, near the He d'Ouessant. It was three 
o'clock of a stormy foggy morning. Fourteen of the 
shipwrecked crew were cut adrift in a small skiff and 
lost their bearings in the dense fog and fierce gale 
and were driven upon the treacherous rocks of that 
terrible coast. Towards six o'clock of the same morn- 
ing, Rose Here, an aged peasant woman, destitute to 
the verge of starvation, stood on a ragged point of 
cliff, gathering in the night's harvest of fish and sea- 
weed. She heard below her in the tumult of the 
shrouded morning the cries of the abandoned and 
desperate men. Although not able to swim, she 
plunged into the sea, was picked up by the skiff, and 
by her knowledge of the coast was able to guide the 
terrified sailors into the safety of the harbour. 

(From the report of the Syndic of Ouessant Fishermen, 
published in the Paris Figaro^ December 21, 1903.) 

1 HE hurl of the sea, the swirl of the fog. 
The black black wind like the scourge of a flog; 
The boom of the sea in the gloom of dawn 
And the teeth of the foam where the tide drove on. 

[27] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



The whip of the wind round the point of Pern, 
That Rock of Wrecks where dead men learn 
The voyage that has no return. 



Rose Here stood sullen by the sea 
And the haul of the deep-sea nets 
She plucked across her knee. 



" Shroud o* the mist, my sister/* said she, 

" There's ruin abroad on the steppes of the sea. 

Shroud o' the mist, keep me blind/' said she. 



" I am haggard and brown with wrinkled lips ; 

What do I care for stranger ships 

Or the face of a corpse that dances and dips 

Like a swollen gourd on the sea's finger-tips? 

I am ancient and empty with wrinkled lips. 

Shroud o' the fog, my sister/' said she, 

" There's ruin abroad on the steppes of the sea." 



She plucked from the nets across her knee 
The struggling harvest of the sea. 
Small creatures writhing to be free. 

[28] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Throb of the gill and glassy eye. 
Pale mouths that gasped in misery. 
The fishes pleaded not to die. 



" Little fishes, my brothers," said she, 
" Yea, this same end shall come to me. 
Only I pay the churchyard fee. 



*' And those rich folk who buy and eat 
Your little bodies for their meat. 
Themselves are food i' the winding sheet. 



Little fishes, my brothers," said she, 
'Tis a weary end for the spoil of the sea." 



The boom of the waves in the thick of the dawn 
And the teeth of the foam as the tide drove on. 
" O ravenous sea, my mother," she said, 
" Do you hunger for live folk or for dead ^ 
There's a million of souls have gone to your maw; 
I know each cave where you crouch and draw 
The pitiful bodies recoiling in awe 
From the soapy touch of your foam-cold claw. 

[29] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



" Are you hungry this morning, O mother/' she said, 
** And with lovers or wives would you fain be fed? 
I am not loved and I am not wed. 
I am hungry myself, O mother," she said. 



The He d'Ouessant gave a human cry. 
It flew from far like a hectic star, 
The voice of men who dread to die, 
The voice of men on death's strait street. 
Of quick souls in a winding-sheet. 



Rose Here leaned over from her rock; 

The sea in her face like a snowy flock 

Shook and screamed to menace and mock. 

" They are down below where the sea-bulls fight, 

Where the horns of the rock like beasts interlock; 

'Tis I who know their piteous plight. 

And the shoals of the sea are as glass to my sight. 

I must leap below if I dare, if I dare, 

I must save them, save them," said Rose Here. 



(Through the smoke of the sea and the smother of 

foam 
She will pilot their boat to the harbour of home. 

[SO] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



They will ride the sea and the sullen crest 
Into the peace of the roadstead of Brest.) 



" They are hungry for life, O mother/' she said, 
** As I am hungry for meat and bread. 
'Tis a fierce, fierce pain to be hungry/' she said, 
** And a fiercer joy to be fed, to be fed. 
I come," she called, " I have heard your cry. 
You are young and eager. It's hard to die. 
You are full of blood as once was I. 
You are humans. I love you. . . . You shall 
not die." 



[SI] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



AT SLEEPING WATER 

All day the showery poplar stands 

By Sleeping Water. 
The redwing calls from the wet landes. 
Black willows dip their streaming hands 

In Sleeping Water. 

All day poor Landry by his door 
From dawn's pink fog till evening hoar 
Looks for the ship that comes no more 
To Sleeping Water. 

His neighbours smile and shake the head 
For little Jeanne is long since dead, 
Who with her madcap lover fled 
From Sleeping Water. 

All day the blue-yoked oxen strain 
The dripping bronze kelp-laden wain. 
Creaking along the seaward lane 
By Sleeping Water. 

[32] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



All day poor Landry's ancient gaze, 
Holding the hope of other days. 
Is fixed upon the long sea-haze 
By Sleeping Water. 



The russet hills, fringed low with spruce. 
Slope into creeks of flower-de-luce. 
Blue-bannered by the reedy sluice 
Of Sleeping Water. 



The grave Acadian women pass, 
Black-caped, to christening and to mass. 
Brushing the tufted cotton-grass. 
By Sleeping Water. 



And Landry turns his patient ear 
To list the sound he used to hear, 
Jeanne, carolling like a wood-note clear 
By Sleeping Water. 



Wild vetch and roses pink and large 
Clamber along the grey sea-marge 
And peer into the placid targe 
Of Sleeping Water. 

[S3] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



But nevermore the lovely view 
Of Jeanne, skirt lifted from the dew. 
Plucking the rose and meadow-rue 
By Sleeping Water. 

From Belliveau to Pointe Eglise 
The little broom-like apple-trees 
Are bent before the sharp sea-breeze 
By Sleeping Water. 



And Landry, his white hair afloat. 
Crouching within his tattered coat. 
Still watches for the vanished boat 
By Sleeping Water. 



The trim sand-pipers on the beach, 
Weeting and bowing each to each, 
Pace up and down the shingly reach 
Of Sleeping Water. 



" Wait, wait," they ever seem to shrilly 
And Landry waits and hopes until 
The Fundy twilight settles chill 
On Sleeping Water. 

-[34] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



He hears the winged wild sea-folk 
With frenzied laughter and rough croak 
Scurry and scream around Grosses-Cocques 
At Sleeping Water. 



And " Jeanne, Jeanne, Jeanne,'* their pet- 
ulant cry 

By Sleeping Water, 
Between the tossed sea and the sky ; 
While in the dark the tide leaps high 

At Sleeping Water. 



All night from loud St. Mary's Bay 
At Sleeping Water, 

The fog stalks in, vast, silent, grey; 

All night the shuddering poplars pray 
By Sleeping Water. 



[33] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



KISMET AND THE KING 



1 HE king lay ill at Ispahan 

And ill at rest. 
All day^ all nighty his couriers ran 
To fetch rare herbs to cure the man. 

The king, oppressed 
By Allah's ban in Ispahan. 



The poet sat him at his feet 
With lute of gold. 

*' Sing me a song for sultan meet, 

To hush me into slumber sweet. 
To hush and hold 

Till they return, my couriers fleet." 



From Khurasan the hot wind sped. 

The hot simoom: 
" His wing of flame," the sick man said, 
'* The fiery Angel of the Dead, 

Witli brow of gloom. 
Allah, not yet, not yet ! " he said. 
[86] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



The poet touched a plaintive string: 

The days are two. 
There are two days, he sang, king. 
When useless are the prayers we bring. 

The deeds we do. 
For lease of life, mighty king. 



First, on the unappointed day. 

The day unset. 
Men cannot kill nor tempest slay: 
Yea, second on the appointed day 

Of dread Kismet 
Not Allah great can bar the way. 



The Ethiop waved a sleepy fan 

Above the bed; 
Even at the gates the couriers ran, 
With potent herbs to cure the man. 

The great king, dead 
Upon his bed in Ispahan. 



im 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



ASGARDA IN BAGHDAD 



LJ PON his silken rug the Caliph sat, 
Green-turbaned^ drowsy-eyed^ pale-cheeked and fat; 
His favourite slave drooped near him on her mat. 



Without, a copper sun had glared all day 

On empty streets shimmering like red-hot clay, 

On quiet booth and caravanserai. 



No sound save the cicada's shrilling thin; 
Like heat made vocal seemed its feverish din, 
And one lone Arab cried his water-skin. 



The Caliph sighed : " But Baghdad days are hot — 

Asgarda, fable me some pleasant spot 

Where palms and springs are and the sun shines not.'* 



[38] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Her, years ago, the pampered Caliph bought 
From pirates who on northern shores had fought. 
Whence, save her name, no memory had she brought. 



Through silken shades that shed a golden gloom 
One dazzling ray crept quivering through the room, 
Striking Asgarda and the lotos-bloom. 



She saw no more the lilies in the jar. 
For lo ! a vision thick with many a star 
Swept on her from her childhood's days afaro 



The look within her eyes was blue like flame. 
The Orient language to her lips that came 
The f rory northland wonders could not name. 



" T see a place like diamond-dust all white ; 
Ah, Caliph Abdul, pardon thou my flight, 
But my soul tingles with a strange delight. 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



" My feet break crisply through the ground's white 

crust ; 
On, on, I go, like pilgrim-priests who must, 
Tickled by many a delicate dagger-thrust 



" From winds that make yon glittering forest clank 
Like armed men, and ranged in ghostly rank 
They gleam as white as linen from the tank. 



" I reach a river sparkling with the sky, 
Smooth like the floor where Dervish dances ply. 
Colder than marble slab where wine-skins lie. 



" Beside its brink, grasses of crystal sheen 
That clink and rattle when I press between. 
Like tinkle of many a beaten tambourine. 



" Of pearls and diamonds here is precious store. 
Such gems as happy Zobeide once wore 
Flung in the opulent moonshine of this shore. 

[40] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



" Like chill white wine from jewel-studded bowl 
Yon moonlight streams and, an enchanted goal. 
Slants its long road and charms my very soul." 



She paused; no sound within the place was heard. 
Breathless above her hung the glistening Kurd, 
The Caliph bent to catch her murmured word. 



Her soul, a-tremble, paused upon the wing; 
She heard the breath of death behind her sing. 
And smiling, cried she, in a voice of spring, 



" How wondrously I speed, apace, apace ! 
Wrapped in the vast white arms, I race, I race! 
The large moon draws me with her shining face. 



" The whistling wind behind me follows fleet- 
Here she fell forward at the Caliph's feet, 
Asgarda, stricken by the deadly heat. 

[41] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



A GIRL OF LAZISTAN 



1 WAS only a girl of Lazistan. 

In his veins the blood of the Sun-God ran. 



He plucked me out from the soil of the street. 
He called me the rose of his garden retreat. 



I was his fountain that laughed in the sun. 
His star that glittered when day was done. 



I was the jewel that lay on his heart; 

Mine was the shrine where he worshipped apart. 



I was only a girl of Lazistan. 

In his veins the blood of the Sun-God ran. 

[42] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



He loved me, he kissed me, I lay on his breast; 
I was his bulbul that sang him to rest; 



Into his arms I would melt for repose 

And he would enfold me as leaves do the rose. 



I was only a girl of Lazistan. 

In his veins the blood of the Sun-God ran. 



They came in the midst of the dark fragrant night 
And the almond-tree blooms fluttered down in affright. 



Of a sudden They swooped, like sirocco They came 
And They blasted the flower of our love as with flame. 



Those purple-clad Priests, with their arms waving 

wide. 
Woe, woe to the follower their faith who defied. 



For I was a girl of Lazistan. 

In his veins the blood of the Sun-God ran. 

[43] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



They say the Eternally Pure decree 
Doom for lovers who loved as we. 



For him in the Tower of Silence a bed 
And Parsi prayers at sunrise said. 



For me to be hurled like refuse far 
Into the river that runs by Istahr. 



In an hour They will come and take me away. 
Yet he loved me and kissed me but yesterday. 



The Eternally Pure have decreed in vain. 
We care not, not we, for death and its pain. 
For the souls become one of two lovers slain. 



Even mine, a girl of Lazistan 

And his, whose blood from the Sun-God ran. 



[44] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



CAPTAIN AND KING 



JhlE is my captain and my king 

In whom I trust. 
Yea^ should this earth and firmament 

Crumble to dust 
Still might his voice reanimate 

My mouldering clay 
And his fine touch would lead me forth 

To Realms of Day. 



[45] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



THE POET MOON 



H.OW the palms tossed at Bordighera, 

How the grey olives blew, 
How vivid shone the Mediterranean 

'Twixt shaken plumes of yew! 
Then those dim miles of violets. 

The depth, the hue. 

The scents that flew. 
The shell-pink villas, cypress-closes 
And walls that gushed with heavy roses. 



At twilight that fantastic rock, 

A castle by the sea. 
And the long flaming ribboned west, 

A road to Memory, 
And that bright trembling crescent moon^ 

A poet-thing 

That seemed to sing. 
Inscribing with its fairy feather 
Lyrics of love and golden weather. 

[46] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



ALPINE-GLOW 



^^ HEN all the range is violet smoke 

And all the valley night 
One peak swims like a sculptured isle. 

An amethyst of light. 



It seems a bright and visioned mount 
Upheld by cloudy liands^ 

Illumined by some dreamed-of glow 
That falls on heavenly lands. 



It floats a neighbour to the stars 
That glint the twilight's blue; 

Transfigured, a Beatitude, 

Like that high thought of You. 



[47] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



THE SLAIN ONES 



What of the gallant dead 
Borne from the field? 

Oh, the draped silent head. 
The empty shield! 



Kiss the swift moveless feet 
That won their goal; 

Crown the unseeing brow, 
Joy to that deathless soul! 



What of the gallant hearts 
Slain, that live on. 

Who eat their daily bread 
When joy is done? 

[48] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Nay^ not for them the wreath^ 

The bugle's note; 
Theirs to taste morn and night 

The sword within their throat. 



What of the gallant hearts 
Slain, that must live? 

God of the Shrouded Hands, 
Shall they forgive? 



[49] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



TWILIGHT IN ITALY 



1 HE Rhaetian hills are blotted out ; mist-billows 

wreathe and roll; 
A lamp shines at that shepherd's door like a large 

aureole. 



The good grey sheep come tinkling home unto that 

shepherd true^ 
And all my wandering day-thoughts go climbing up 

to you. 



[50] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



THE UNATTAINABLE 



XlARK, the pipes of the upland blowing crisp 
On the riotous j oy of the snow-coloured Visp ! 
The freshness of ferns that drip in the shade 
And the long laughter of that wild cascade. 



But high above that shattered valley and the torn 
Elf -laughter of the Visp hurled out upon the morn,- 
Far, far above, against the heavenly blue upborne, 
The vastness and the silence of the Balfrinhorn! 
White, gentle, terrible, against the blue upborne. 



Oh, love, do I forget one briefest space 
The high tranquillity of your lone face? 
I pray to God to grant me of His grace 
One moment to forget that star-like face. 
That immemorial forehead killing me 
With yearning for the thing that cannot be. 

[51] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



COMPENSATION 



W HEN you that were the light of life went out 

To walk Somewhere afar. 
There fell upon me all the shapeless doubt 

Of night without a star. 



By day the weary sunlight seemed to flare 

Upon a swimming land; 
By night I kissed your bright pathetic hair 

And touched your wasted hand. 



Ever I held you to my breaking heart. 

Not as I knew you, glad. 
But a pale shadow Death had called apart 

And with my own grief, sad. 

[52] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Till, you remember, once you came to me 
In the long hours of night; 

Blue were your eyes and smiling joyfully, 
Your voice, the old delight. 



Now often when the house is still I hear 
Your hands upon the keys. 

Just as you used in many a bygone year, 
Awakening melodies. 



And sometimes when in deepest dreams I bide 

Shut out from day's alarms, 
I find a joy worth all the world beside. 

The heaven of your arms. 



[53] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM 



I jQVE. you will not remember as I do, 

— I who remember all for love of you, — 

The glittering race of the Barberine 

And its seven- fold leap through the dark ravine. 



Oh, hurry, ere that heaven you seek be lost. 
For who has heaven to gain counts not the cost. 
The race is perilous and there is no sun; 
Who knows if at the end sweet heaven be won? 
He plunged unreching to that last swift run; 
Even so for love of you would I have done. 



Perhaps you have forgotten how one day 
The mists were wreathed illimitably grey^ 
And how we said no word, but took our way 
By the embattled gorge of the loud Borgne, 
Water-sculptured and torrent-torn. 

[54] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



And the stern granite of my life seemed wrought 
To sculptured grooves of anguish by the thought, 
The steady, hopeless, hungry thought of you. 
Forever and forever flowing through. 



At eve we lifted up our eyes and saw 

The wonder and the splendour and the awe:^ 

Rose-purple sunset like a flaming tree. 

And that last mystic glow on Veisivi, 

And, blown out like a passionate white corolla. 

The shimmering arcs of showery Arolla. 



Oh, passionate, unattainable white soul. 
My prayer, my despair, my joy, my dole. 
My life, my death, my after-death-the-Goal! 



[55] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



THE HEART'S COUNTRY 



JH.ILL people turn to their hills; 

Sea folk are sick for the sea; 
Thou art my land and my country^ 

And my heart calls out for thee. 



The bird beats his wings for the open^ 
The captive burns to be free; 

But I — I cry at thy window, 
For thou art my liberty. 



[56] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



THE MOUNTAIN GOD 



1 HERE is a mountain god, they say, who dwells 
Remote, untouched by prayers or temple bells; 
A god irrevocably who compels 
The hidden fountains and the secret wells 
Upward and outward from their cloistered cells; 
He calls them, calls them, all the lustrous day. 
And not one rippling child dare disobey. 
There is a god who dwells within your eyes 
Like that veiled god of mountain mysteries. 
Compelling all my secret soul to rise 
Unto a flooded brim of still surprise. 
Flooded and flushed beneath the god's great eyes. 
Beloved, you have called me to the day, 
And all the fountains of my life obey. 



[S7J 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



THE PILGRIM BELL 



1 HE pilgrim bell keeps calling me, 

(Patrizio, Patrizio.) 
And all the folk are winding up 
By that steep path and slow. 



From all the little villages 

Mezzegra, Azzano, 
And still the bell keeps calling me 

(Patrizio, Patrizio.) 



Giustina once came calling me 

(Patrizio, Patrizio.) 
Her eyes were dark like purple grapes. 

Her small face was aglow. 
** Gioj etta, run away," I said. 

I turned my busy wheel. 
** The rich folk want their olive wood 

To shine like apple-peel." 

[58] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



I did not even kiss her lips. 
The sun is red and low. 

Once more to hear that little voice J 
(Patrizio, Patrizio.) 



Santa Maria on the hill 

You cannot succour me. 
Though I should climb from morn till night 

To reach Mount Calvary 
And pray a thousand prayers before 

Thy Son upon the tree, 
But still the bell keeps calling out, 

(Arise, arise and go!) 
If I could hear that little voice! 

(Patrizio, Patrizio.) 



The pilgrim bell keeps calling on, 

And San Giovanni too. 
But San Martino's purple rock 

Yearns down into the blue. 
The black boats creep from shore to shore 

From Crocione's feet 
To where Tremezzo stretches out 

Her plane-tree tented street. 
It is Giustina's voice I hear, 

[59] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Giojetta in the skies, 
Giojetta, pleading, passionate, 

" Dear Virgin, I arise. 
Peccavi, yet there still is time; 

Peccavi, well I know. 
Sweet bell, you are a long-lost voice,* 

(Patrizio, Patrizio.) 



[60] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



THE COUNTRY THAT HE KNEW 



The river was floored with the sky. 
Pale clouds floated therein. 

The sad still hemlocks grew adown, 
And old dreams walked within. 



Oh, that sky in the river deeper and deeper 

Than the blue arch overhead. 
And the grass in the river that waits for a reaper. 

Like folk who dream they are dead! 



The stars in the river blur and quiver 

Miraculously faint. 
Father, 'tis there that I shall find 

Ease for my long complaint. 

The stars do not drown, far down, far down. 
The dark woods do not blow. 

That flying bird no ripple stirred. 
Oh, father, let me go. 
[61] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



It is the country that I knew 
Ere ever I was born; 

I cried for the lost calms of it, 
I dreamed it yester-morn. 



My little son, no land is there. 

No sky, no cloud, no star. 
Nay, you would never come to it, 

Though you should fall leagues far. 



Father, lean closer to the edge. 
Or else your eyes are blind. 

I see two things move movelessly. 
Their looks are deep and kind. 



The ripple from our sliding keel 
Troubles their glassy faces. 

Look, how they shake like candle flames, 
Blown to their primal places. 



My soul is that pale water-weed 

With spread translucent hands; 

I swoon me downward to the dimness 
Of those deep underlands. 

[62] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



I bathe in the lost calms of it 
As on my natal morn. 

For 'tis the country that I knew 
Ere ever I was born. 



[63] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



IN A RUINED ABBEY 



1 HE moon blows toward the broken tower, 

A winged sphere of fire, 
And through the ivy over-streaming 

Rose-window, arch and crumbling choir 
Trembles the wind in ecstasy 

His fingers of desire. 

Where lords and ladies long ago, — 

— Yolande and Mordred, — 
Knelt pale before the crucifix, 

With bells upflung and incense shed. 
Now many a pink-tipped daisy lifts 

Its fair unknowing head. 

Where scutcheons gleamed, and lance and helm, 

Trophies of sacred fight. 
And the great windows gloomed and glowed 

Like jewels dusky-bright — 
The eternal hills look gravely through 

These arches of the night. 
[6*] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



A thousand memories walk tiptoe. 

Sainted^ occult^ unspelt; 
An elder time's envelopment^ 

Like mists that blow and melt. 
So we that stray here hand in hand 

Have on our foreheads dimly felt 
The chrysmal kiss processional 

Of Presences that knelt. 



The moon shakes at the unportalled door, 

A sailing sphere of fire; 
The shadows lie all breathlessly 

Still as intense desire. 
Beloved, — thus our hearts are hushed 

Yet mounting ever higher. 
Until they mix in one clear note, — 
(Oh, lyric heart, to sing, to float!) 

Heaven-smitten like a lyre. 



[65] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



THE CURSE ON DUNOON 



1 HE sea and the sand 
Go hand in hand. 
** I am Memory," quoth the sea, 
" A sleepless mind^ 
I urge, reiterate." 

** I am Vengeance," quoth the sand. 
*' Lidless and blind, 
I scourge, obliterate." 



The pines kept watch beside Dunoon; 

They slanted toward the sea. 
Betwixt their plumage leaned the moon, 

Pointed at him 

A finger slim 
When stumbling through the twilight dim 

Came shapes and revelry. 

Faint footsteps from the sea. 
Soft thunder of the sliding sands 

And footsteps from the sea. 

[66] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



She blew across the yellow dune; 

She came a mystery, 
A vagrant and a nameless tune. 

Quick of the year 

Hummed at his ear. 
Sap of young leaves, a prophet clear. 

The pines cried: "She is yours; 

Ecstacy that endures ! " 
The insistent sea sang in his blood; 

The stars were lamps and lures. 



She was the witch-light of Dunoon, 

Scooped from the sparkling sea. 
With hands like golden cups of June. 
" O rainbow Mary, 

Wild sea-fairy ! " 
But spirits do not love to tarry. 

She gave him kisses three. 

Foam of the dying sea. 
The dunes sobbed all night long for her; 

The pines talked to the sea. 



I am the master of Dunoon, 
Dunoon beside the sea. 
(Vision of Mary 
Tarry! tarry!) 

[67] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Death comes to take me — none too soon! 

Cursed be my lands 

If any hands 
Cut down the wood beside the sands 

Where Mary came to me." 

The sands heard and the sea. 
Soft thunder of the sliding sands 

And footsteps from the sea. 



The sea and the sand 

Go hand in hand; 

" I am Memory/' quoth the sea, 

" A sleepless mind, 

I urge, reiterate." 

" I am Vengeance," quoth the sand, 

" Lidless and blind, 

I scourge, obliterate." 



He died, and still the pine trees stood 
Communing with the sea. 

Till stranger folk struck down the wood. 
Then the slow sands 
Reached forth their hands. 

Crawled up along the wasted lands; 
, [68] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Also in memory 
Muttered the grey-lipped sea. 
Soft thunder of the sliding sands 
And long wash of the sea. 



The blind dunes quenched the springing land; 

The strong remembering sea 
Followed the lithe heels of the sand. 

The limpets spawn 

Where years agone, 
Her bright feet rippled up the lawn; 

Meagre crustaceans crook 

Through every oozy nook. 
And where she danced between the doors 

Pale polyps peer and look. 



The sea and the sand 

Go hand in hand; 

" I am Memory/' quoth the sea, 

" A sleepless mind, 

I urge, reiterate." 

** I am Vengeance/' quoth the sand, 

" Lidless and blind, 

I scourge, obliterate." 

[69] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



WE WERE LOVERS 
(Having neither beginning of Days nor end of Life.) 



In the dark unwritten ages innocent of time and 
beings 
When a million voiceless aeons 
Flashed and perished like the fireflies 
Spangling a brief summer dusk^ 
In those dim and elder ages^ you and I were boon 
companions, 
We were elements that mingled marvellously 
In the dark unwritten ages innocent of time and 
being. 



I was blown a nebulous vapour, giant wraith of wraths 
terrific 

At the birth-hour of an ancient unimaginable nomad; 
You the lightnings at my centre, 
Rosy heat and lambent dartings, 
Treading out my mirky vintage joyously, 

At the birth-hour of an ancient unimaginable nomad. 

[70] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



You were once that luminous body 
Born of blazing revolutions of uncounted speeding 
cycles^ 

Swift^ centrifugal, amazing, 
Shot from brightness to the blackness of adventurous 

infinity ; 
I the meteor flaming after by inevitable sequence. 

Ripping the astonished ether 

With my savage, slashing sword-track. 

Swift, centrifugal, amazing. 



When the morning stars had voices. 
And the round rim of the heaven tenantless of flying 
creatures. 
Peered above the primal ocean. 
When the troubled waters lifted, chanting greatly 

their unease, — 
Heaving, tossing, curling ever round the vast vague 
of the planet, 
I a wave that sought forever; 
You the sweet and powdered starlight. 
Light white foam upon my forehead. 
Following my swinging footsteps laughingly 
Through the large unmeasured spaces 
Of the blind tormented darkness. 
When the troubled waters lifted, chanting greatly 
their unease. 

[71] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Or when motion was extinguished^ 
You the moon were sculptured shield-like, 
Unattainable wild white heraldry 
On the swept blue fainting midnight; 

I, the tide that knelt and trembled, climbed and 
shuddered, falling backward, 

Calling to you in my anguish till you pitied me and 
calmed me. 
Melted me to lucent wonder. 
In the swept blue fainting midnight. 



I remember, too, the twilights when you wore the 
young moon's crescent. 
And you lay within my bosom delicately. 
I remember, too, the twilights. 



Then from out its mothering whirlwinds. 
Seethe and swirl of coiling chaos. 
The primeval earth grew conscious of the sun*s first 

dreadful dawning; 
I, the sullen mist that slumbered on the cold mouth 
of the marshes ; 
You the beam that drew me upward 
Till I shared your solar splendours, 

[72] 



PART ONE: THE UNATTAINABLE 



Far above the virginal shining peaks of continents. 
Far above and drenched with gladness; 
Far above and drenched with gladness speech- 
lessly ;, 
We were elements that mingled marvellously. 



[78] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



SLEEPING ERINNYS 



I AM Erinnys. Pity me. I lie asleep 
And all the sins of all the world 
Within my heart I keep. 



She is Erinnys. Pity her. How wan her sleep. 
For still across her dreams 
A cry for justice streams 
And the tall spear is whirled. 



Some sin and smite and laugh. Some quench the 
hearth-fire's ember. 

These may forget and pass. I follow and remember. 

I am Erinnys. Pity me. My cheeks are always wet 

And my hair wild with haste, I who would fain for- 
get. 

My sisters of the joyous birth, you Nectar-Bearing 
Sweet, 

You, Crescent-Crowned beside the spring, you of the 
Silver Feet, — 

[77] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Give me one bright Olympian hour^ one golden cup 

to ken^ 
Or sleep unvisited by dreams of dooms of sinning 

men. 
O kings and mighty conquerors, lay down your 

dripping sword! 
My scourge shall goad you to the place where no man 

calls you lord. 
O all ye fateful lovers desiring over-much, 
Who win a flaming kiss, it is my torch you touch. 
Listen, 'tis their remorse unborn that haunts my 

tongue. 
Because, though sinless, I have fled since time was 

young. 
With wastrels, wantons, all the May-Day throng, — 
Therefore I am unutterably wrung. 



She is the goddess in whose noble eyes 

The unendurable accusation lies 

That rends the secret heart of such as thou. 



Yea, this heart-breaking eloquence of her looJc 
Is for the tears that men have scorned to shed 
And the atonement falls upon her head^ 

[78] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



See the spent lines, the darkness on her hrorv. 

The stricken beauty of her lips. 

Perhaps thou art the sinner whom she strips; 



I am Erinnys of the lifted snake 
And the unsilenced mouth. 
I listen, follow, follow, overtake. 
It is not mine to waver or delay. 
I listen, follow, follow, overtake. 
And at the end I slay. 



[79] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE FUGITIVES 



W E are they that go^ that go. 
Plunging before the hidden blow. 
We run the byways of the earth. 
For we are fugitive from birth, 
Blindfolded, with wide hands abroad 
That sow, that sow the sullen sod. 



We cannot wait, we cannot stop 
For flushing field or quickened crop; 
The orange bow of dusky dawn 
Glimmers our smoking swathe upon; 
Blindfolded still we hurry on. 



How do we know the ways we run 
That are blindfolded from the sun? 
We stagger swiftly to the call. 
Our wide hands feeling for the wall. 

[80] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Oh, ye who climb to some clear heaven 
By grace of day and leisure given. 
Pity us^ fugitive and driven — 
The lithe whip curling on our track, 
The headlong haste that looks not back! 



[81] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



A CHALLENGE 
(In Beauchamp Chapel) 



Here do they lie, like mute engraven psalms. 
Crossed feet and smiling lips and folded palms. 
Where travellers pass or pause and muse 
awhile, 
Struck to the heart by the remorseless calms 

Of those draped feet, that still unsmiling 
smile. 

A thousand springs have leaped to tender flame. 
The years have wheeled to centuries since they came. 

Dead, proud and smiling to their stone repose. 
What do they reck of youth, or love, or shame. 

Or the red heart of yonder English rose? 

Death, it can never be that as they lie. 
So shall this eager passionate burning I, 

Thrilled through and through with life's 
magnificence. 
Drunk with my birthright, stung with ecstasy; 

Death, I'll have none of thy vast insolence! 
[82] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



AS A LITTLE CHILD 



I REMEMBER my cry at the cardinal flower 

When I first found its hidden place ; 
I remember the streamers of northern lights, 

I, awake in my bed one hour; 
I remember the look on my father's face 

When I did a childish wrong; 
I remember my first loneliness. 

How the hours were long, were long ; 
I remember the touch of my mother's shawl 

As it hung on the closet door. 

And the loving folds it wore ; 
I remember a toy in the baby's hand 

When he fell asleep and smiled. 
This is the prayer I pray to-night. 

Not for joy or a life undefiled. 
But that always the simple things may come 
Thus to thrill my heart, to burst my heart. 

As they did to the little child. 



[83] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



FORERUNNERS 



IN the first sleep-watch of the night 
With dreams that flit and hesitate^ 
Hark for the tokens of our flighty 
Lost voices seeking each his mate : 

A hurrying step along the road, 

A knock, a cry, but only one. 

" Nay, heed them not for they shall be 

Forgotten with the morning sun." 

These are the tokens of our flight; 
We, nameless ones who go before. 
Who stop to call a comrade soul 
But find no latch at any door. 

That drifting smoke across the plain. 
That footfall fading by the sea, 
Perchance our camp fires dying out. 
Our passionate steps no more to be. 

[84] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



The vagrant red of autumn leaf^ 
The haunting echo and its grief, 
Luring you on from hill to hill, 
The vagrant red, the wandering sigh. 
It is the life-blood that we spill. 



Yet we are nameless before God ; 
We have nor grave nor epitaph; 
And where we perished of our thirst. 
Yea, where there was no drop to quaff, 
A spring shall gush from our dead bones 
And full-fed ones sit down and laugh. 



[85] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE RAILWAY YARD 



Into the blackness they grind 

With ever slackening speed 

And out to the widening light 

With the thunder of valves that are freed. 

Myriad headlights^ 

Green lights and red lights, 

A tangle of sparks and of darks ; 

A thousand lives and a thousand souls 

Poured out to the city's blend; 

A thousand lives and a thousand souls 

Sped forth to their journey's end. 

O, neighbour, what is the end you seek? 

There is none to reply though the dead should 
speak. 



Click of a switch, a lever's turn, 

The clang of the opened gate. 

Has the hour struck? Will the train be late? 

One prays to his God and one curses his fate. 

[86] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



The lover smiles as he touches her hand^- 
And the outgoing passengers wait. 
It is only two who thread the throng. 
A thousand lives and a thousand souls 
Pass by and hurry along. 



There are some who stand and never go 
When the porter opens the gate: 
" Good-bye^ good-bye, come back to us soon ! '* 
Their heart is sick with the merciless tune : 
Whoot, whoot, hough-hough, zig-zig and away. 
To-morrow we follow but never to-day. 



A thousand lives and a thousand souls 

Who have cast their lot together ; 

And some set out for a whole new life 

And some for a change of weather ; 

For a dance or for death. 

Yet they sit and they sleep. 

Or they stare at the engine's curling breath ; 

They sigh or they smile 

At each vanishing mile. 

0, soul, give your neighbour greeting! 

[87] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



But faces are clouds 

Like the flashing trees 

And the dizzy houses retreating. 

They are running a race, though they know it not. 

With a thousand lives that have gone before; 

And a thousand souls with a thousand goals 

Must press through a single door. 

0, neighbour, think, as the drive-wheel spins, 
Of the gutted lamps and the torch-like sins. 
Of the babes unborn and the yarvning gins! 
What is the crown and who is it that wins? 



[88] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE HOUSE TO HIS FIRST MISTRESS 



A. L. W. 



Across my threshold they have gone. 

Many the steps and sweet, 
But yours alone that I love best 

Is the rhythm I repeat, 
From days when you and I were young 

And autumn flamed along the street. 
Remembered trailings of your skirt 

And hauntings of your feet. 



The generations come and go 

And I have held them dear: 
Between the lattice and the hearth 

They dance and disappear, 
But echoing through their songs at night 

It is your voice I hear 
That knew me when I was unknown. 
Conceived me out of dust and stone. 

And loved me in that bygone year. 

[89] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



I took you to my lonely arms. 

You were the soul of me; 
There was no speech between us twain. 

There needed not to be ; 
Your watchful nights were mine, were mine. 

And mine your minstrelsy. 
Your seal upon my forehead is. 

Forever still to be. 



Forever with the wheeling heavens 

When the year begins to wane, 
— The falling leaf, the golden tree. 

The melody of rain — 
Lo, you shall dip between my doors 

Or glorify my pane. 
Singing that first old joy in me. 

The vision of your brain, 
That I may reach remembering hands 

To greet you home again. 



[90] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



IT IS OUR SIN TO HAVE REMEMBERED 



If this were my last hour on earth 

And I might speak with thee, 
" Friend," I would say, " after my death, 

Think gentle thoughts of me; 
For thou, of all the friends I had. 

Pierced deepest in my side. 
Teaching me love as high as heaven, 

(Thy love so soon that died) 
Teaching me love as high as heaven. 

Mine to abide. 



Therefore when I am in my grave 

Think gentle thoughts of me; 
Forgive that poor unconquered fault. 

That love denied by thee." 
For they who rob us of our hearts 

Forgive us not. 
It is our sin to have remembered 

When they — forgot. 

[91] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE PAST 



I WENT into a shadowy land 

Seeking Myself. 
I met and seized one by the hand, 

" Thou art Myself." 

** Thou hast my hair, my lips, my eyes. 

The look I wore." 
She answered in disdainful wise, 

" Thyself, no more." 

" Strange ways you go, strange cups you 
drink. 

Withheld from me. 
Mysterious are the thoughts you think, 

I know not thee." 

So she that was Myself withdrew 

Into the night; 
Coldly the fog-wind rose and blew 

And blurred my sight. 

[92] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



RECOGNITION 



The Earth lay dark as some closed book, 
Featureless, shrouded wholly, 
And melancholy. 
While far above her vainly shook 
The dumb Sky's passionate downward look. 



Then the swift lightning flashed between. 

Fearful as Joy's first cry. 

And Earth and Sky 
Each saw the other in that keen 
White marvellous moment's leap and sheen. 



Thus we, beloved, yearning, not aware. 
Till suddenly there came 
The look of flame 
And in that instant's vision rare 
Each knew the other's soul laid bare. 

[93] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



A SINGLE MIND 



JrlOW the ship strains and struggles, 
Leaps through the mirk of night. 

How the fierce ocean springs to oppose. 
Flings up its breast in fight. 

Steady the ship swings onward. 

Disdainful, deaf, amort 
Save for its one vast passion. 

To port, to port, to port! 

Buffeted, smothered, blinded. 

Ploughs through the storm my soul. 

Obstreperous circumstance 
Betwixt me and my goal. 

Thick darkness is upon me. 

Huge elements that thwart; 
Steady, my soul, ride onward, 

And mayst thou win the port! 

[94] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE SUPREME FORGIVENESS 



1 HEY have forgiven me^ these that I have wronged, 

While you still mindful are. 
Because that I have suffered wrong from you. 

Therefore you stand afar. 
Yet I do not accuse at all, my love. 

Nay, Mercy cry. 
They that love least, they hurt the most. 

(God, that through them we die!) 



[95] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE SORROWFUL STREAM 



IN the Land of Life it floweth and floweth. 

The Sorrowful Stream, 
And through its waters each mortal goeth. 

However he dream 
He will never reach the pitiless beach 

Of the Sorrowful Stream. 



There are some and the waters but lap their feet 

Of the Sorrowful Stream, 
And some, 'gainst whose breast the billows beat 

And the foam-crests gleam, 
And others there be, like wrecks of the sea, 

Washed away by the Sorrowful Stream. 



[96] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THEOPHANY 



1 HAVE found, I have found, a supremest delight, 
And my spirit is stirred and the tranquil waters, 

O blest of men's daughters, 
All my future I know will be holy and bright. 



Long was I alone nor did I repine. 

For I said: " It is better, my heart, to be quiet! 

But sweet is love's riot 
And dark was my life till it flowed into thine. 



[97] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE VAIN PRINCE 



Whom once the purple prince crowned with his 
roses 

Latterly he counts least; 
Ineffaceable autographs or relentless mirrors, — 

They chronicle the ages since that feast. 



[98] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE WEDDING GUEST 



1 EA, I am he that cometh to the feast. 

Newborn that night; 
Naked, unblessed, unbidden by the priest. 
Tall as high heaven, yet littler than the least. 



My footstep trembles down the waving chords 

Floats in the rose. 
So even they that laugh across the board 
By the averted lid salute me lord. 



Lo, they refuse to look me in the eye, 

To touch my hand, 
Yet in the space 'twixt question and reply 
The silence of my mouth shall make outcry. 



I stand far off, fearing the dusty ways 
These two may tread ; 

LOFCL 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Natheless, between the altar and the aisles. 
They hear my sob under a sea of smiles. 



Fair is the face of Paradise, pathetically sweet. 
Yet fourfold swifter otherwhere travel the questing 
feet. 



[100] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



INTROSPECT 



JVIy window looks upon the night. 

The pine woods and the cloister-gloom. 
Her window looks upon the light, 
And violet peaks of prospect bright 
And miles of meadow bloom. 



At noon I hear unending beat 

Of solemn breakers on the shore. 
And know that round her high retreat 
The rapturous thrush is carolling sweet 
His golden I adore. 



Betwixt my trees in afternoon, 

The silent shadows stand. 
Watching for night that falls too soon, 
— The night that falls without a moon,- 

To crouch at my right hand. 
[101] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Once at my bidding did they come. 

Once — but long time ago. 
Listed my voice — now I am dumb 
The while I hear their phantom hum 
And flitting to and fro. 



I sit and stare behind my pane 

Into the spectral mist, 
Dimly desiring to attain 
Beyond, above my sullen plain 
Her window, glory-kissed. 



[102] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE DYING CHILD 



1 CAN see the trees of heaven 

And their branches drip with dew. 

But the River of Death is blacker than ice, 
O mother, I cannot pass through. 

I can see the smiling angels. 

I want to fold my face within their skirts. 

But the River of Death strangles my breath. 
O mother, I cannot swim through 
Alone, without you, without you! 



[103] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE UNREMEMBERED 
(Fragments of a Lost Memory) 



VtHERE have they gone, the unremembered things, 

The hours, the faces, 
The trumpet-call, the wild boughs of white spring? 
Would I might pluck you from forbidden spaces. 
All ye, the vanished tenants of my places ! 



Stay but one moment, speak that I may hear. 

Swift passer-by! 
The wind of your strange garments in my ear 
Catches the heart like a beloved cry 
From lips, alas, forgotten utterly. 



An odour haunts, a colour in the mesK, 

A step that mounts the stair; 
Come to me, I would touch your living flesh — 
Look how they disappear, ah, where, ah, where? 
Because I name them not, deaf to my prayer. 

[104] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



If I could only call them as I used. 

Each by his name! 
That violin — what ancient voice that mused! 
Yon is the hill, I see the beacon flame. 
My feet have found the road where once I came. 
Quick! — but again the dark, darkness and shame. 



[105] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



AFTER VICTORY 



CjRANT me strength to face my conquered; 

Teach me the smile of pride; 
Give me patient endurance 

For my deeds that are glorified; 
But after the splendour sweeps past, 

One little hour to abide 
Alone and in darkness at last 

With the simple joys that have died. 



[106] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



BEYOND THE SPECTRUM 



W E cannot look beyond 
The spectrum's mystic bar. 
Beyond the violet light 
Yea^ other lights there are 
And waves that touch us not 
Voyaging far. 

Vast ordered forces whirl. 

Invisible, unfelt. 

Their language less than sound. 

Their name unspelt. 

Suns cannot brighten them 

Nor white heat melt. 

We chip an eye-hole through, 
(Swedenborg, Roentgen, Hertz,) 
Into that walled land. 
Glimpsed as by candle-spurts. 
Our naked ignorance 
It hurts, it hurts! 

[107] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Or, in the clammy dark 
We dig, as dwarfs for coal. 
Yet one Mind fashioned it 
And Us, a luminous whole, 
As lastly, thou shalt see, 
Thou, O my soul. 



[108] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE CHILD THAT ONCE YOU WERE 



O HOPELESS face of middle-age, 

disappointed eyes. 
And lips of cold finality, 

What sad soul stalks behind that cage. 
Those stern bars of mortality? 

1 saw the child that once you were 
Flit to your look one day, 

A tender boyhood just beginning, — 
And my quick throat rose sharp with tears 
To think of all the sodden years 

Since then, and all the sinning. 
The trusting child that once you were. 

Not wholly drugged to sleep ! 
And all these dreadful spades of earth 

To bury you more deep. 



[109] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE DIARY 



What matters it on such or such a date 

What did betide? 
We have the present glory; what is worth 

Aught else beside? 



" Nay/' said the other^ " when we read this page 

Some future day. 
The old forgotten joy will be renewed: 

Ah, who can say? " 



But we so altered by the lapse of time. 

It will seem vain; 
This brook song and those tender words we spoke,- 

An idle strain. 



*' Nay/' said the other, " if this golden hour 

We do enshrine. 
Long afterward 'twill walk like morning with us. 

Our youth divine." 
[110] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



HEIMWEH 



JMy soul cries out with longing 
For that dear house my home; 

It crowns the end of every way 
Down which I roam. 



It hath a portal open 

Unto the happy sun. 
And casements star-embroidered 

When day is done. 



And best of all and fairest. 
Serenely set apart, 

I see Her waiting for me. 
The woman of my heart. 



Her hands are made for loving. 
Her lips for stainless truth, 

And her clear eyes are beautiful 
With changeless youth. 

[Ill] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



My soul cries out with longing 
For that dear house my home; 

It crowns the end of every way 
Down which I roam. 



Yet have I never found it, 
Though still it beckons me 

With sweet and poignant promise 
Of what shall be. 



[112] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE ELDEST BORN 



I WAS a little baby, dead 

That earthly morn; 
They gave me a white rose to keep; 
They sang: "It is not death but sleep.* 
She cried: "My eldest born!" 



I was a little spirit then 

Reaching to God; 
An eager ignorant upward flame, 
Cleaving the darkness whence I came. 

Tiptoe above the clod. 



She cried: " The feet that I have kissed 

Cold in the grave; 
The shut mouth and the eyelids dim — 
O God, the marble look of him ! '* 

I, at heaven's architrave, 

[113] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Trembled but shrilled aloud^ " I come, 
O Christ, my brother." 

The Beautiful leaned down and smiled; 

" Go back to earth, thou little child, 

And comfort thy sad mother. 



" For when in dreams thou hoverest near. 

Gladdening her eyes, 
A glimpse of heaven she shall obtain. 
And drinking of her cup of pain. 

Thyself shalt be made wi^e/* 



Time washes up along our shore, 

A vast calm sea; 
And I have learned the weight of tears. 
Sin's colour and the length of years. 

The stir of things to be. 



My brothers win the earthly goal 

With toil and stress; 
Gone is their infancy divine 
And on their brows is writ the sign 
Of earth's forgetfulness. 
[114] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



But God's large moments have made room 

Even for this^ 
That all unguessed of them, unseen. 
Like a slim flower I wave between 

And meet my mother's kiss. 



She folds me to her lonely heart 

At grey of morn; 
A little child I am to her. 
As in those wondrous days that were, 

A babe, her eldest-born. 



[115] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE DREAM-CHILD 



Oh, the Dream-Childj the Dream-Child, 

That never yet has been! 
He creeps into her bosom 

When winter nights are keen. 



Her mouth upon his eyes, his hair; 

" Sweet, how I worship thee ! " 
Oh, the Dream-Child, the Dream-Child, 

God! that shall never be. 



Last night she heard him wailing 

Out in the sleety din, 
** All little babes are warm in bed. 

Dear mother, let me in ! " 



She opened wide her empty arms: 
" Creep close into thy nest. 

Look, I will warm thy hands, thy feet. 
Thy lips upon my breast." 
[116] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Yet still she hears him wailing, 
" Dear mother, let me in. 

All little babes are warm in bed- 
God, is it not thy sin 



To let the Dream-Child wander 
A poor forbidden guest; 

The barren mother wait and wait 
With passion at her breast? 



[117] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE SOLITARY 



CjtOD said unto the soul; 
Go thou thy way alone 
And make no moan. 



The cup of comradery 
Is not for thee_, 



Nor memory's golden sheaf 
Of loves too brief; 



Nor tears of sorrow shed 
Above thy dead; 



A pale impersonal strife 
Thine outward life; 
[118] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Within, thy bosom torn 
By thoughts unborn. 



The soul said unto God: 
Nay, give me joy and woe; 
'Tis better so. 



The seal of commonplace 
Upon my face; 



No seething strange unrest 
Within my breast. 



But a dear hand to hold 
As I grow old. 



God said unto the soul: 
This is the common lot, 
Thy portion not. 

[119] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



What life and loving are 
Know thou afar. 



Events beside thy door 
Shall pause no more 



Than once to give thee cry 
And hurry by. 



The soul said unto God: 

And how^ Lord^ wilt thou bless 

My loneliness? 



God said unto the soul: 
I will anoint thine eyes 
To make thee wise. 



Thy vision shall be keen 
Of things unseen^ 
[120] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



That even as thou dost brood 
In solitude. 



This marvellous inner sense 
Shall recompense; 



Joys thou hast never had 
Shall make thee glad. 



And love that is not thine 
Thy heart entwine. 



[121] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THEY THAT STAND ON THE EDGE 



VV E stand on the edge of your kingdom. 

Looking in^ looking in. 
You lean to us out of your gardens, 

" Behold, it is pleasant within ! ** 

You nod to us out of your palace: 
" Behold the work of our hands. 

Mosaic and marble and statue, 
And beauty from many lands ! '* 

Like children who call to the beggars: 

" O tarry and see us play ! " 
But where shall they go at supper-time, 

Beggars, at close of the day? 

We stand on the edge of glory 
When the golden banners wave. 

Oh, to be one of the victors, 
Or dead in a glorious grave! 

[122] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



To the road again, ye failers. 

The hour and the power have florvn. 

Go search for your own lost kingdom. 
The song and the sword and the throne. 

We linger, heart-sick and forgotten. 
On the worn and abandoned trail 

That leads to a crumbling kingdom. 
We that dream and that fail. 



For we dream that we come to our kingdom. 

Looking in, looking in; 
And our phantom selves they beckon to us, 

"Be glad and enter within ! '* 



We set our foot to the threshold. 
We reach our hand to the door; 

Lo, the House is a heap of ashes 
And we take to the road once more. 



[123] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE TORTURED MILLIONS 



1 HE cry of the tortured millions rises to me 
Like the cry of a glacial river in its gorge 
And the smoke of their suifering surges upward to me 
Like the mighty clouds of the twilight valley lands. 
I shut my lids in the dark and I see them toiling, 
The burdened backs and the glazing eyes and the 
fettered hands. 



They are dying that I may live, the tortured millions. 

By the Ohio river, the Euphrates, the Rhone. 

They wring from the rocks my gold, the tortured 

millions ; 
Sleepless all night they mix my daily bread; 
With heavy feet they are trampling out my vintage; 
They go to a hungry grave that I may be fed. 



They do not know my face from a million faces, 

Nor have I ever beheld those poor oppressed. 

I only hear the sound of their groans in the valley, 

[124] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



The hiss and the grind and the heat of their torture- 
wheels, 
Engine and oven and murderous flying loom. 
Poison of dust and faces sheet-white in the gloom. 

I do not demand their service, no, not I. 

They are my slaves whom I wish to be free and 

happy ? 
But I may not free them or thank them or mercy cry. 
Hunger and thirst and cold and aching bodies. 
This is the priceless price that buys my health. 
Emptiness, hopelessness, pitiful wickedness, this. 
This is the stuff I sew for the purse of my wealth. 

What shall I do for my slaves who work without hire. 

What shall I do, I who have asked them not? 

Shall I fold my hands on my mountain-peak in silence ? 

This is the natural order, this the common lot. 

I will call to them, I who am one but they are many. 

To cease their toil; but no, they obey me not. 

I warm my hands at the fires of ruining houses; 
On a dying mother's breasts I sink my head; 
Last night my feet were faint from idleness, 
I bathed my feet in blood her children shed. 
O thou eternal Law, I wish this not to be. 
Nay, raise them from the dust and punish me, 

[125] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY 



1 AM that figure standing in the dark 
And just beyond the plain equation mark. 



Though sometimes clothed in robes of A or B 
Yet still behind the veil I baffle thee. 



The things X equals^ nay, they are not X, 
But lying prophets all, to lure, perplex. 



To lead thee up and down the weary slate 
While lurking on the other side I wait; 



And all thy columns fallen into wrecks 
Thou stumblest back to where I still am X, 

Impregnably ensconced, smiling and cool. 
To flout thy skill and keep thee After School. 

[126] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Nought is a gateless Wall of frightful stones, 
And Minus is a Cave of Dead Men's Bones. 



My habit is the place where never yet 
Was foot of living child or teacher set. 



I am the Man who wears the Iron Mask, 

The Shore of Italy, the Unfinished Task, 

The Headless Horseman riding through the dark, 

The Unknown Sign beyond the equation mark. 



[127] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



GENIUS 



What seest thou on yonder desert plain. 

Large, vague and void? 
I see a city full of Uichering streets^ 
I hear the hum of myriad engine heats. 
What seest thou? . 

I see a desert plain 

Large, vague and void. 



What seest thou in yonder human face. 

Pale, frail and small? 
/ read a page of poetry, of sin, 
I see a soul by tragedy worn thin. 
What seest thou? 

I see a human face 

Pale, frail and small. 



What seest thou at yonder dim cross-roads 
Beside that shuttered inn? 

[128] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Untravelled Possibility, 
The Inn of Splendid Mystery, 
What seest thou? 
I see the dim cross-roads 
Beside a shuttered inn. 



[129] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE PROPHET 



lO speak one burning Word 
Thou shalt be heard, 
Yet that one Word a sting 
Of suffering 
And on thy lips a torch 
To sear and scorch 
Until thou dost set free 
Its utmost plea. 



(Rather than this fierce brand 
An empty hand. 
Fling it beyond my reach 
Lord, I beseech!^ 



Nay, thou art born with this 
One road to Bliss. 
If thou the gift deny 
'Twill be a cry 

[130] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



Of everlasting fear^ 
Of murder in thine ear; 
A sword within thy side. 
This gift denied. 



{What, then, if I obey 
^And go my way?) 



The world it shall illume. 

Thyself consume. 

For even in thy despite 

This Flame shall write, 

Sealing thine ecstasy 

And tragedy, 

And yet thy birthright given. 

The price of Heaven. 



[ISl] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



EXTINCTION 



From Himalaya's lofty blue-bright snows 

A river springs^ as ancient travellers tell^ 

That leaping white through tiger forests fell 

Into an endless tropic plain outflows;, 

Where by their huts swart Hindoos, sweltering, doze 

Beneath a sky like Krishna's brazen bell, 

Dreaming perhaps of some palm-darkened dell 

When on their quivering roofs sirocco blows. 

Unheeding of its end that river goes, 

Shrinking beneath the sun's Medusa spell, 

To desert lands where mortal may not dwell. 

Like a lost life that evil ones compel. 

Drugged to destruction through its own repose, — 

Till the clutching cruel sands around it close. 



[132] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



THE TRAVELLER 



LiONG ages since upon the planet Earth, 

Was his unconscious pilgrimage begun 

At roseate rising of the hill-top sun. 

A traveller from the moment of his birth 

He hailed no inn nor hospitable hearth 

To rest him ere his journey's end was won; 

And when the ways of earth he had outrun 

He knew not what his journey's end was worth. 

Now as he travels on from sphere to sphere. 

Before, behind him, in perspective dim. 

The long road lies to meet the horizon's rim; 

But still his journey's end is no more near 

Than at that first sun-dawning, roseate clear. 

Long ages since when God's hand beckoned him. 



[133] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



WHITE NIGHTS 

(In a Swiss Hospital) 



JMY House of Pain stands high upon a hill 
Where mountain splendours all the prospect fill; 
I, shut within, command them at my will, 
Yet often I forget their sky-flung line, 
Hearing a little moan that is not mine 
And the quick feet of nurses for responsive fine. 



(At eve to-day the blackbird sang without; 
He saw the glory of the Alps, no doubt, 
— The silver heights, the snowy uplands long, — 
And turned their eloquent radiance into song.) 

Oh, mirth, mirth, mirth, come, live with me! 

Oh, love, oh, life, oh, ecstasy! 



Motionless as the stilled heart of the storm 
All night I watch my window gather form, 
Thinking that these same hours may waft away 
Sweet souls of little babes born yesterday, 

[134] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



While he my neighbour on his torture-wheel 
Begs for the mercy of the exquisite steel 
And all night as we lie in chambers walled apart 
His fierce inexorable stare strangles my heart. 

(To-morrow when at last from darJe blooms day 
What will my careless blackbird have to say?) 



Now is the threshold between night and morn, 
When souls meet on the stairs, the dead, the newly 

born ; 
The Grey Hour, close enfolding fears and immortal 

things. 
(I, that am sick, have listened to the sweeping of her 

wings.) 
The dark has flowed to dusk, the dusk has ebbed and 

gone; 
A burning amber is the wild March dawn. 
What of the night beyond my chamber door ? 
What troubled eyes have closed to wake no more ? 



Prisoner of pain I lie, watched, silent, bound. 

Yet my swift fearful thoughts follow each ghostly 

sound 
And faintly spell somewhere the muted tread 
Of those who lift the calm unknowing dead. 

[135] 



PART TWO: FUGITIVES 



(LooJc! one high mountain in that far Savoy 
Is smitten with the sun's red Sword of Joy.) 
Wake and give thanks, ye women of the ward, 
By whose racked bodies vulture death keeps guard. 
O narrow beds, O looks all meekly turned, 
White faces and the great eyes that have learned, 
Have ye not seen how tall the beacon burned? 



Listen, my comrades, to yon outland flute. 
Our punctual blacJchird's jubilant salute. 
He sees the distant morning touch that height 
And sings, exulting in the Lord of light. 

Oh, mirth, mirth, mirth, come, live with me! 

Oh, love, oh, life, oh, ecstasy! 



[136] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE CLOUD AND THE MOUNTAIN 



1 WO sister Whitenesses lay along the sky. 
Immortal bubbles stiller than a sigh, 
White domes of dreams immeasurably high. 



The Cloud spake to the Mountain and it said: 
" Lo ! I am still as thou and lift a hoary head. 
Men marvel at my height and are adread. 



" My promontory rides the blue, a gallant prow; 
My valleys they are deep, the sunset smites my brow. 
I draw men's eyes with distance, even as thou." 



The ancient Mountain spake : " Ephemeral and vain, 
This evening thou shalt vanish never to come again, 
A shape, a fleet similitude, built out of rain. 

[139] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



" No flocks of sheep or goats follow thy phantom 

trails ; 
There are no folk inhabiting thy misty vales; 
Thine insubstantial headland, lo, it faints and fails. 



" Thou art a dream, a shadow, and a lure, 

A ghostly mountain and a haunted moor 

Where thin thoughts move but nothing can endure.' 



The Cloud spake to the Mountain : " Even so 

It is with thee and thy perpetual snow; 

Thou art a dream that insect generations know. 



" The men that build their cities upon thee 
Are dimmer than the Shapes that people me, 
Figments of flesh and soon no more to be. 



" Ages before thou wast conceived, I AM, 
Before the earth took shape or harboured man. 
When the chained stars like molten rivers ran. 

[140] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



" The frailest little thought that climbs my stair 

It shall outlive the rock of thy despair^ 

Clothed with the stars when thou art empty air. 



" For as I am a fable in thy sight. 

Art thou and all things, save the still small light 

Of candled souls that journey home by night." 



[141] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



TO HARRIET 

XXa S* Xi* 



Dear Harriet, we saw you go 

Blithe and alone, 
Like some tall nymph against a curved 
sky-line, 

Stepping wind-blown. 
Gallant in your virginity. 
Adventurous and free. 



The flutes of morning sang for you. 

The snows allured. 
Oh, the far visions of those rose-white peaks 

Floating unmoored! 
Dear Harriet, why hesitate, 
You, the wild wind's playmate .f* 



You heard a stranger voice that called. 
Strange yet remembered 

[142] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



In dim prenatal chambers of your life. 
As fascinated wild things lift the head 
We saw you pause in startled silhouette, 
Fearing the call, yet listening, Harriet. 



The scarlet hills you love are touched with frost. 

The headlands are like ships. 
Thither! before the dream-dew flash is dulled. 

Nor heed those wistful lips. 
He calls you from the land without a name. 
To the old Tents, the Distaff and the Flame. 



In dim prenatal chambers of your life 
Through each unquickened spring. 

In that enchanted sleep wherein you lay 
The Flame was king. 

The blossoming fire that rules the races yet. 

Has drawn you home, Valkyrie Harriet. 



[143] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



BEFORE THE DAWN 



JriOW grey the garden was before the dawn, 

And after that sad wraith of moon had set, 

When hand in hand within the door that let 

On Fairyland, no doubt, we stood withdrawn 

And watched the fading stars before the dawn; 

Tiptoe we trod between the lilies wet 

To where the peonies and the parsley met, — 

Where were the fays that dance upon the lawn? 

Hoar mourning-bride with close-fringed eyes of blue 

Trembled along each blade with beaded dew. 

And harboured by a drooping balsam cup 

A folded moth like drowsy reveller 

Beside his wine, made inarticulate stir. 

Dreaming perhaps of some diviner sup. 



** This is the fairy time before the dawn. 
When every bud is full of mystery, 
And, — hark! I think I hear a melody 
Of little pipes come down the pearly lawn 

[144] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Where garden elves their gossamer rings have 

drawn." 
(Ah, the dim twilight-time's grave ecstasy !) 
Look, in this twisted flower what tenantry- 
Fluttering within to vanish with the dawn." 
(Ah, the shut lilies' pale tranquillity!) 



" Only its satin plaitings to untwirl, 
Then hold within my hand a fairy girl ! " 
Do you remember how you laughed in glee 
As from the morning-glory's opened whorl 
Tumbled a boozy belted bumble-bee? 



[145] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



TO A WOOD PATH 



Who found you first. 
Wild wood thing. 

Womanly, wayward. 
Wandering ? 



In remote ages. 

Scored by the million 
Once there slept here 

A winged reptilian. 
The print of his body 

Inscribed for your reason. 
As he dreamed in his coilings 

A cycle or season. 



Up sprang the forest 

Through ages succeeding ; 
Stalked the wolves one by one. 

The grey wolf leading. 

[146] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Then in the spring-time. 
Boughs interlacing, 

The doe and her fawn 
Went tenderly pacing. 



Here you flit, there you flit, 

Teasingly distant. 
Vanishing ever. 

Ever persistent. 
Beckoning us on. 

Last born of the million, 
To walk in the print 

Of that dreaming reptilian. 



Where the wolves quested. 

Savage and meagre. 
We are love's pensioners. 

With hearts that are eager. 
Whither the path leads. 

Dear, little matter; — 
Amber of spring hole. 

Waterfall's chatter; 
You are my goal, dear. 

Wild wood thing, 
Womanly, wayward. 

Wandering. 

[147] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE LAMP OF THE GENII 



At evening when my Unadilla hills grow mellow 
And lose themselves against the sky's pale infinite 

yellow_, 
Far down the dwindling river-reach^ the silvered 

alley, 
On the dim ranges high across the brooding valley^ 



Shineth a little light, on all the hills one only, 
Calleth me like a voice, wayfaring, clear and lonely, 
That fain would find a comrade : " Good neighbour, 

art a-bed? 
I haste to cheer and comfort the visions of thy 

head." 



Perhaps one sits within the glow of that far-lighted 

candle. 
A book, and bread and cheese, a babe to toss and 

dandle ; 

[148] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Warm in the ruddy mantle of fireside graciousness. 

Yet witless of the wider beam, the lordlier spacious- 
ness ; 

How the wild Genius of the Lamp, across the ranges 
fleeting, 

Knocks nightly at a stranger door and heartens me 
with greeting. 



Clothed as a pilgrim star He comes and proffers me 

his beaker, 
With dreams and glories for strong drink to satisfy 

the seeker. 
My soul is winged away 'twixt clouds of starry 

faces 
To all immortal thresholds of all delights and 

places. 



While he, the master of that house, my far unknow- 
ing neighbour. 

He sits and nods beside the lamp and rests him after 
labour : 

For him the globe, the oil, the circle on the ceiling, 

•The kiss upon his cheek, the homely shadows 
reeling, 

[149] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



But mine, the Trail of Wonder that is to him 
denied, 

The Trail across the valley where Shapes go side by 
side ; 

The beauty of their footfall blossoms as a blossom- 
ing rod 

And the measure of their stature is the fulness of 
a god. 



[150] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE BORDERLAND 



1 HE darkness trembles like a rising tide 

On day's pale verge, 
With myriad filmy voices floating vride 

On the spent surge. 



The creeping line laps up the futile land, 

The strong, smooth sea, 
As on some heart, lies like a quiet hand 

Hushing its glee. 



[151] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



VAGRANTS 



NOW'S the time to be abroad 

Singing, troubadouring, 
When the wind calls from the south. 

And the maple buds are luring. 

Every yeoman's blood runs blither, 

With the greensward for his footing, 

And the gypsies take the road 

When the pipes of May are fluting. 

Let us forth then to the hedgerows, 

Following where the Blue-Flag leads us, 

For our kingdom is the Outland, 

And the mead-cup brims to speed us. 

We will lodge us for our slumber 

At the Sign of the Wild Cherry, 

Scrip nor staff to burden us 

But the heart to make us merry. 

[152] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Day by day the trail to travel. 

Vagrants careless of indenture. 

Lords of all the world at sunrise, 
Open-hearted for adventure. 



So, love, our last steps may lead us 
To the dreaming sunset yonder. 

Where abide all fairy fond ones. 

Souls of those who love to wander. 



[153] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



LOW TIDE 



Winged flare of an autumn sunset 
Over the long^ low opposite island, 
Hills of loneliness and silence. 
Desolate wide rock-flung bottoms. 
Corrugated glistening bottoms 
Naked left by the sea's withdrawal. 
Occasional sea-pools glowing warily. 
Placid circular looking-glasses 
Set like gems in the rugged beaches. 
Copper tints of the failing sunset 
Painting the crescent lapping shallows 
With burnished hues of mineral brightness. 
Streaks of flame on the umber edges, 
Cliff's and caverns of the coast-line. 
Far beyond, the lavender ocean. 

Lavender, infinite, melting to heaven. 
A fishing-boat that floats at anchor. 
Silhouette on the sky's clear colour. 
Swaying upon its slender drag-pole. 
Downward trembling in blots of reflection. 
[154] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



The first lisp of the tide returning. 
Significant as birth or spring-time; 
Terrible omen, tender promise 
Of things inevitable, resistless. 
Far-off travelling single sea-bird. 
Sculptured an evanescent instant, 
Dipped to the sunset's molten centre. 
Sunk in the sunset's golden mystery. 



[155] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



WAKING SONG 
(After the Proven9al) 



Jr RESH the dawn is breaking, 

Purple grows the sky. 
Orchard-birds are waking. 
Meadow-grasses shaking 

Dewy banners dry. 
Which, pray, think you i^ the sweetest. 
Day that lingers or night that is fleetest? 



All the silver night. 

All the night of May, 
Apple-blossoms bright. 
Drifted clear and white 

In the moonbeams lay. 
Which, pray, think you is the sweetest. 
Day that lingers or night that is fleetest? 



Wan the wind-flowers wait. 
Petals opal-tinted, — 

[156] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



At the Orient gate 
Comes their king in state; 

Gold his auguries glinted. 
Which, pray, think you is the sweetest, 
Day that lingers or night that is fleetest? 



[157] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



TENSION 



1 HE night was round and dark and still 

And hollow as a sphere, 
Belted with iron memories. 

Bolted with bars of fear. 



Ihe loud hush beat upon my face, 
The blackness reeled and sang, 

When from an outer undreamed place 
A sudden bird-note sprang. 

All in the middle of the night. 

Hollow and grim, — but hark ! 

That blissful note unbound my throat. 
Unwound the tightening dark. 

A chaffinch dreaming in her sleep 

Of purple thistle balm. 
Released the spell of silence fell; 

The night grew wide and calm. 

[158] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



WATER-FOWL IN THE FOG 



1 HEY sit upon the mist-banks 

Veiled as mythology. 
Or starry creatures on the scrolls 

Of large astrology. 

Like pearly notes of music 

They pulse through spectral pages. 
As in fantastic miracles 

Of Fuji-yama's mages. 

An ivory rilievo. 

The half-glimpsed inspiration 
Of some archaic chiseler's 

Untamed imagination. 

Or a Chaldean vision 

Of white-plumed sacred dancers 
Revealed at templed Abydos 

By cloudy necromancers. 

[159] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



On some lost lake of Hades 

This is thy dream, Leander! 
White breasts that float and vanish, 

Snow-pale and hyacinth-tender. 

The billowing mist upbears them^ 

Drowned breasts that melt and wander. 

On some lost lake of Hades 
This is thy dream, Leander ! 



[1601 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



WOUNDED 



LjET her creep to earth again, my children^ 
She will never heed our signal calls. 
Do not whine along her track. 
She will not come footing back. 
She is wounded to the heart of her, my children. 
And the warm blood follows where she falls. 



Let her be, forget her steps, my children. 
Yea, forget the anguish and the length ; 
Let her find a covert place, 
There to hide her glazing face, 
And to stretch her grievous paws in silence, children. 
Dripping, drop by drop, her scarlet strength. 



She will dread the common trail, my children, 
Crouching where the deepest shade is cast. 
Creatures of the earth and sky. 
None can comfort when we die, 

[161] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Only dark and unremembering, my children. 
For we feel the Hour is come at last. 



She will creep^ wet foot and slow, my children; 
She will never heed the signal call; 
She will voiceless be and blind 
To her kin and to her kind. 
Waiting in the shadow, O my children, 
Wounded, for that is the End of all. 



[162] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE GREBE 



Out in the Northern night 

Under the star-lit sky, 
What creature in affright 
Utters that dreary cry? 
A-leu-leu-lo, by the lonesome river, 
All the long night through in the reeds by the river. 



Is it a little child, 

Lost once, lost evermore. 
Whose cry, so eerie-wild. 

We hear along the shore? 
A-leu-leu-lo, by the lonesome river. 
All the long night through in the reeds by the river. 



Is it some god alone 

A thousand years or so. 

Calling in dolorous tone 

The nymphs he used to know? 

[163] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



A-leu-leu-lo, by the lonesome river. 

All the long night through in the reeds by the river. 



Is it a wandering ghost 

Grieving for some grey crimie. 
Who haunts our quiet coast 
From immemorial time? 
A-leu-leu-lo, by the lonesome river. 
All the long night through in the reeds by the river. 



[164<1 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE HEART OF THE WOODS 



1 LIKE the leafy-murmuring solemn hush 
Of woods that wall me round with underbrush. 



Their intricate tapestry of twinkling green 
Glinted with sunlight^ the grey trunks between^ 



And the thick-woven carpet, chequered brown, 
Dead leaves from many an autumn, matted down; 



Remote from all things, sun and wind and sky, 
Far, far above my head the tree-tops sigh, 



And like the echo of a distant land 
I hear the great lake wash upon its strand. 

[165] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



So maiden calm, so silent, serious, 

'Tis someone's heart, in mood mysterious, 

The depths profoundest of an untouched heart 
From pain and passion very far apart, 

Untravelled and unknown, a land enchanted^ 
Wild, labyrinthine, dim and fancy-haunted. 



[166] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



PURPLE CROCUSES IN THE VAL 
BREGAGLIA 



You dear dim flowers of the spring 

Purpling this autumn valley 
Like singing thoughts that come in dreams 

You flutter musically. 

The quick and water-loving bird^ 
A winged mote, darkly dances 

Where Marcio's mist-blown cataract 
Has carved its wayward fancies. 

Dazzling Bondasca lifts sky-high 
Her white unflinching splendour 

Above your little laughing tribes, 
Undaunted, brief and tender. 

On wild Bregaglia's rugged slopes 

A blossoming miracle. 
You kiss the shore by Maira's roar 
. In silence lyrical. 

[167] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



RONDELS 
I. 

THE EAST 

A BIRD upon a budding wild-rose branch, 

Dawn breaking o'er the hills. 
And music rippling from sequestered rills. 



Maiden-wise doth the Orient bloom and blanch. 

Till, ah ! alack-a-day ! 
Rushed forth a cloud across the bridegroom's way. 



Vainly the East a passing shower forecast 

On purple peak and plain 
Nemesis-like fell the tumultuous rain. 



O, lost at morn, the sun came not at last 

Aflame along her path. 
Rosily reaped the West her sister's aftermath. 
Even so it is, I cried, O Life! O Love! 

[168] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



11. 

THE BIRD 



A bird upon a budding wild-rose branch, 

Dawn breaking o'er the hills, 
And music rippling from sequestered rills. 



Maiden-wise doth the Orient bloom and blanch. 

And to the sweet-briar spray 
Rings out a later bird his amorous lay. 



In all the morning's dewy splendour bright. 

And sunny afternoon. 
Never was wild-rose deluged more with tune. 



O, wearied with the long day's ceaseless light, 

At eve she fell asleep, 
Red petals pale, and no one came to weep. 
Even so it is, I said, O Life ! O Love ! 



[169] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



SERMONS IN TREES 



1 HE purple of early November 
Lies like a dream on the hill; 

In this basking hollow of woodland 
The berry-vines glitter and thrill. 

And a maple is hushed to remember 

Tranced days of quiet September, 

And the gold that she used to spill. 



My feet through the wood-path bearing 

Are an alien noise in the dale. 
Stirring to wings of terror 

A partridge or two from the trail; 
So with my uncourteous daring 
I have hindered their leisurely faring. 

The pretty brown birds of the dale. 
I am humbled and full of repentance 

For my race's enmity, 

[170] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



That these gentle-eyed wood-creatures 

Should whir from their hostelry; 
And I fain would make their acquaintance 
That they should reverse the sentence 
And not be afraid of me. 



A tawny squirrel comes whisking 
Around the bole of a tree. 

With his bright shy look untroubled 
And his tail a-quiver with glee; 

I am glad of his billowy risking. 

The trustful heart of his frisking ; 

And I thank my brother the squirrel. 
For his friendliness to me. 



[171] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



SEA-BLOOD 

AN INLAND CHILD^S INHERITANCE 

Why did you stir, little brother. 

At middle of the night? 
There was a knell of the great sea-bell, 

A flash of the lighthouse light. 



(From a distant tower the hour tolled clear. 
And far below in the valley shook the torch 
of a niountainer.) 



Why did you rise, little brother. 
So long before the dawn? 

I heard the wail of a sinking ship. 
The cry of a sailor's horn. 



(The hills returned a panther's whine. 
And underneath the sharp green stars creakled 
a frozen pine.) 

[172] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



What did you see. Utile brother. 

At dawn on the mountain bleak? 

I saw the white of a tossing sea^ 
Noiseless from peak to peak. 



(Before the sun's first fiery leap 
He saw the frightened mists of morning 
down the valley sweep.) 



Where have you been, little brother. 

This eager afternoon? 
I went to the heart of a naked wood. 

With the lost and ragged moon; 



The sun in my face made a blinding mist^ 
The branches gleamed like spray; 

I heard the sob of a mighty surge 
A million miles away. 



Why do you ride, little brother. 
All day in your willow swing? 

I feel the shiver of boom and spar 
And I hear the top-sail sing; 

[173] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



I shout with joy, " Land, land, ahoy! '* 
The helmsman cries, " Hip, hip ! " 

Through the soapy swale of plunging foam 
I rock with the rocking ship. 



Why do you stand, little brother. 
At sunset by the pane? 

Beneath that fringe of dreadful firs 
I see a golden main; 



There are no shores on either side. 

For God hath set no bond. 
But still it lies, how still it lies. 

And stretches far Beyond. 

(Those infinite leagues of silent foam 

In the uncharted golden west 
Where only phantom ships may roam. 
Beat through the sea-blood of this child and 
draw him home. 

Home to the deep sea's fathering breast.) 



[174] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE CALL OF SPRING 



I HEARKENED at dawn to the call of the Spring, 

The voice of a spirit. 
And my soul leapt up like a wild-wood thing, 

Like a hawk from its tirret. 



She is calling me out to the open wold. 

To the scurrying hollow, 
To the violets dim in the dead-leaf gold. 

Where the white-wings follow. 

All the blue April pools are a-dance and alive 

With thrips and with midges. 
Dumb shimmering mites that equally thrive 

As the merle on the ridges. 

The merle sits a-tilt on the rotten-wood rail. 

Blithe heart for his booting, 
Toling me out to the gypsy trail. 

With his mocado fluting. 

[175] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



The merryman Wind I will have for my mate, 

On the moorland reeling, 
And a journeying shadow when day is late. 

With a cloud for my shieling. 

The Stars overhead will lamp me to bed, 

A pilgrim unladen; 
The wayfaring Tree my guild-brother will be 

And the Lark my glee-maiden. 



[176] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE GLACIER 



1 AM the mother of rivers 

And out of my bosom of snow. 

Restless, tormented and leaping, 
My passionate children go. 

They spring from the deathly Silence 
Of a white and passionless life. 

Yet far below in the valleys 

Is the rumour of their strife. 

They gnash their teeth in the darkness 

Of the dolomitic gorge; 
They plunge from the porphyry precipice 

Like a thunder- driven forge. 

I sit unattainably splendid, 

Folded from peak to peak. 

O thou last-born of my bosom. 
What goest thou forth to seek? 

[177] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



I am white as the whiteness of dawning; 

I lift a perpetual brow, 
A frozen and pitiless beauty, 

Yet once I was driven as thou. 



I mounted to crests of anguish; 

I sank to the cruel crevasse; 
Yet even from this is calmness, 

And lo ! it has come to pass. 



I was sculptured mid-sea of my passion 

Millions of ages ago. 
My lips are locked: I am speechless, 

But I know, my child, I know. 



[173] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE HOUSE OF GREAT CONTENT 



1 HERE is a certain gracious garth I know, 

Unwrought by human hand, 
Most like a faery garden in a book 
Whereon no mortal man may ever look, — 

This lovely croft of land. 



Not far away the sober highway creeps. 

The pleasaunce witting not; 
Its calm of mountain curves in pure embrace. 
Blue-windowed into realms of heavenly space 

About the j oy f ul plot. 



A fair green meadow in a river bend 

By silver willows crowned; 
A sweep of hill-side like a gallant wall. 
And, lone upon its ledge, a pine-tree tall 
Guards this enchanted ground. 

[179] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



It hath a spring bordered divinely blue 

With water-loving flowers; 
A tender isle that fringed with alder is. 
Where fireflies weave their silent symphonies. 

Spangling the twilight hours. 



So cunningly within the hills 'tis set 

In happy youth apart. 
It seems beyond the ken of toil and time, 
Lisping the little river's intimate rhyme 

Deep in its lyric heart. 

Beloved, let the unknowing world go by 

In futile wonderment. 
While, some rich day, there builds for you and me 
Between the willows and the plumed tree 

A house of great content. 



[180] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE FAR COUNTRY 



1 HE tale of life is heavy 
Upon the city street_, 

But dreaming I go ever 

To a far land and sweet. 



By day, the bondman's harness, 
The townling's restless brain; 

By night, a breezy upland, 
A tansy-bordered lane. 

The earth, new-born at sunrise. 
The meadow, smoking mist; 

The river bathed in purple. 
The distance amethyst. 

Behind the druid pine-tree 

The great sun j ourneys up ; 

He lifts the clouds and opens 
The briar rose's cup. 

[181] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



The fox grapes in the boskage. 
Green-panoplied and cool. 

The eager cardinal flower's 

Shy scarlet straight flammule; 



Along the bounteous hillside. 

The round sun at their back, 

The f ronded flaming sumacs. 

The elder thickets black, — 



These are my dream companions; 

Forgot and far behind 
Are play and tinsel novel, 

The culture-maddened mind. 



Or *tis a white May morning, 

Bloom-drifted orchard floors. 

In his green oratory 

A mystic thrush adores. 



Sometimes the calm of sunset 
Poured like a golden wine. 

And spacious streaming shadows 
And solitude divine. 

[182] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Or in the eldritch twilight 

With tree shapes dimly spelt. 

Faint odours float and vanish. 

Stray fireflies gleam and melt. 



Day is a lamp-lit country 

Glimpsed through the window square, 
Where vague, unsteady, houseless 

Things hover in mid-air. 



And I, a loitering shadow. 

With other shadows dwell. 

Twirling like string-tied puppet 
In aimless tinternel. 



Night is the freeman's country 
Wherein my soul, unshod. 

Her thatch-cloak loosed about her. 
Lays bare her breast to God. 



[183] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



INDIAN SUMMER 



What splendid ways 

These russet days 
We roam and roam together: 
Leaving behind the heavy, blind 
Turmoil of town, with lightsome mind 
Through wood and dale 
We seek the trail 
Of scarlet autumn weather. 



The zigzag fence. 
The common-sense 
Of the squirrel's witty chir; 
The vanishing tread of the wood leaves 

dead; 
The torch of the maple beckoning red 
By hill and hollow 
As we follow 
The falling chestnut burr. 

[184] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



On upland higher, 
A fringe of fire_, 
The sumacs take the breeze. 
Clematis white is winged for flight. 
Fox grapes wait for the touch of night; 
Apples drop 
From the orchard's top 
And the frost creeps under the trees. 



Perhaps more slow 
We choose to go 
Than they who walk alone, 
While on the wold the ruined gold 
Rustles a music manifold; 
But onward yet 
Our feet are set 
For a charmed place our own. 



So, pacing faster. 
We watch the aster 
Its frosted purples fling 
By wayside wall, and over all 
The woodbine weave its Indian shawl 
Then by the stile 
In kingly file 
Our goldenrods upspring. 
[185] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



With welcome sweet 
That sunburned seat 
Allures us to delay, 
A green philosophy to rehearse, 
A tale, a golden book of verse. 
Till other lore 
Compels us more 
And lips will have their way. 



Cathedral shades 
The solemn glades 
Draw down on our returning; 
Frosty and chill each lonely hill, — 
But Love, light-footed, leads us still 
Where down the road 
To His abode. 
The orange west is burning. 



ri86] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE SOUL OF THE GOLDENROD 



1 AM the soul of a girl, winged, splendid and tall, 
Alert for the autumn's delectable days when I rise to 
answer the Call^ 



To drink the faint wine of the frost, to spread the 

gold furze of my hair. 
On the lonely hill with the shadows of clouds and the 

pine-tree pilgrims to fare, 



From the milk-white sea of dawning, the breathless 

colourless time 
Beneath the rim of the rose-red sun when the valleys 

drift with rime. 



To the milk-white sea of evening, the edge of the world 

on fire. 
When the mist sweeps up and the moon swims down, 

an untranslated desire. 

[187] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



They buried me years ago where the grave-stones look 

aghast ; 
I was never asleep at all^ but a captive freed at last: 



Free from unsatisfied hunger to walk with the wistful 
things, 

Moths and lizards and forest paths, twilights and hid- 
den springs. 



Free from the deafness and blindness whereto I was 

born and reared, 
Free to be silent and simple, unafraid and wholly un- 

feared. 



It was good to mix my soul with the darkling soul of 

the sod. 
For the bosom of earth is the bosom of knowledge, is 

Understanding, is God. 



It is better to spring from the soil, to be parcel of eve 

and of morn. 
To burst the seed, to unfurl the flower and a plumy 

fruit to be borne 

[188] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



A hundred ways with the winds on their yeoman in- 
visible range, 

Stirred with sentience immortal through rich elemen- 
tal change; 



This is eternal expression, the ultimate noble speech. 
Dimmer and freer and larger than human lips may 
reach. 



I am come to my own again, to the heritage of my 

race; 
Created and master-creator I lift a transfigured face. 



Sister to wayside stones, and to asters on the hill, 
I, the soul of a girl, immortal and golden still. 



[189] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE SONG OF THE SAW-MILL 



Borne in the womb of the forest, lapped in the quiet 
eternal, 
Lay they and ripened for me. 
Thrilled with the tremble of birth-joy, breaking the 
soil maternal. 
Budded and bourgeoned for me. 



Centuries long in the silence of mountains austere they 
flourished. 
Soaring to plume and shaft. 
Battled by bugling tempests, by rain-time and sun- 
time nourished; 
I, in my hunger, laughed. 



Balsam and fir and spruce. 
Tamarack, cedar and pine. 
By shidrvay and chute and sluice. 
Mine are they, mine and mine, 

[190] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Peach-coloured dawning and lilac of shadow, dazzle 
of nooning. 
Whipped to a froth of snow. 
Piping of horns in the frost-stiffened branches or 
lullaby crooning, 
I will sing to you so. 



Over and over aloud, the tale of the years abounding. 

Tiptoe of squirrel and hare. 
White-tailed twinkle of yearling fawns, woodpeckers' 
pounding, 

Lope of the fox to his lair; 



All the intricate melody deep in your bosom cherished. 

Footfall of snow and rain. 
Inarticulate whisper of beech-leaves, secrets that 
perished, 

OLive they anew in my strain: 



Vast and unresting my shriek. 
Insistent, sibilant, grim. 
While the endless pulleys creak 
I whirl to a swiftness dim; 

[191] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Blurred to a motionless speed. 
Centre and jagged rim. 
Stirred to a splendid greed. 
Singing my terrible rede, 
I whirl to a swiftness dim. 



Sweeping and leaping of winds in your branches, the 
fierce revelation, 
Of lightning's Damascus blade. 
Cooing and wooing of doves in your branches, the 
sweet invitation 
Of April-eyed things unafraid; 

Dripping of spring-time, autumn a-whipping the hills 
with her broomstick yellow. 
Partridges' lonely tattoo. 
Meteors startling an August midnight, moon of the 
hunter, mellow. 
These I remember for you; 



Many a sigh of forgotten summer, needless that 
scatter. 
Petals of wax on the trail. 
Breath of the twin-flower, stripe of the sorrel, maiden- 
hair's tatter, 
Pyrola spirit-pale; 

[192] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Many a pearly pattern of winter, sparkle and tingle 

Under the Pleiades dim, 
Burst of the frost like ghostly artillery, — these I will 
mingle 

Into my ultimate hymn. 



Balsam and fir and spruce , 
Tamarach, cedar and pine. 
By shidway and chute and sluice. 
Mine are they, mine and mine. 



Sledded or snaked, with icicles caked or f oamily flaked 
From the drives of the river they scurry. 

Mill-race and flume in a fury of spume and drunk with 
the doom 
That is leashed to the law of their hurry. 



In from the dam with the clambering jack, pine and 
hemlock and cedar. 
Hither their footsteps bend. 
Belt whizzing white with the engine's might and the 
roar of the giants that feed her. 
This the importunate end! 
[193] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Clutched from the calmness of daylight into my pal- 
pitant riot 
Upward and up they are ground 
Till to one moment intense I condense generations of 
simmering quiet^ 
Fused in a sword-flash of sound 



Vast and unresting my shriek. 
Insistent, sibilant, grim. 
While the endless pulleys creak 
I whirl to a swiftness dim; 
Blurred to a motionless speed. 
Centre and jagged rim. 
Stirred to a splendid greed. 
Singing my terrible rede, 
I whirl to a swiftness dim. 

Piston and lever and rod, with the steam-wreaths 
round them melting. 
Duly their task fulfil; 
Quick in the round of obedience, pulley and shaft and 
belting 
Leap to the law of the mill. 



I am the Word and the Law, unpitying, final, terrific, 
Cleaving them through and through; 

[194] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



I am the Word and the Law, joyful, supreme, vivific, 
Heralding birth anew. 



Memory am I to them as I spin through the heart of 
their being, 
Memory and Prophecy, 
Singing aloud in their ear the song of the years that 
are fleeing. 
Shouting the years to be. 



Measures unknown I am mixing for them, the tumult 
of people. 
Sway of the sea-going deck. 
Swirl of light women whirling to music, chime of the 
steeple, 
Wail of the blackened wreck; 



Shuffle of gamesters, scuffle of shoppers, chatter and 
clatter. 
Walking of them that grieve. 
Swinging of bridges and singing of railways, feet of 
children a-patter. 
These, prophetic, I weave. 

[195] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Vast and unresting my shriek. 
Insistent, sibilant, grim. 
While the endless pulleys creak 
I whirl to a swiftness dim; 
Blurred to a motionless speed. 
Centre and jagged rim. 
Stirred to a splendid greed. 
Singing my terrible rede, 
I whirl to a swiftness dim. 



[196] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



AT DEAD OF NIGHT 



At dead of night when the great winds fight 

Titanic war 

In the heavens af ar_, 
When the stars gleam and glance like spear-point and 
lance 

In the sky's black expanse^ 
When I hear the witch-leaves in the eddying dance. 
And a skeleton knuckle my window is knocking 
With a ghoulish tap-tap — 'tis the woodbine a-rock- 
ing. — 



At dead of night when the great winds fight, 

I hear the light tread 

Of shades of the dead,^ — 
Faces dim at the pane that gather and strain, 

A shadowy train. 
That peer, disappear like mists of the rain. 
And I know them, the ghosts of the gay and the brave, 
Awaked from their grave by the wind and the wave. 

[197] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



At dead of night when the great winds fight. 

They summon me forth 

The south winds and north. 
There's a banner flung out and a bold battle-shout; 

'Tis a right royal rout. 
And Paladin Roland at head of the bout. 
There's the clangour of armour_, the twang of the 

bow, — 
Charlemagne and the foe at renowned Roncevaux. 

At dead of night when the great winds fight. 

List! for I hear. 

Borne in on my ear, 
Swift horses that fly like the wind rushing by 

And the Bedouin cry 
Of Blest be Mahomet and Allah on high ! 
And the Syrian scimitar flashes blue 
In the hand of the prophet Al Amin the true. 

At dead of night when the great winds fight. 

Ho! the Viking 

In his vessel a-wing 
From main-yard and mast o'er the sea flying fast 

And the boreal blast 
Booming from icebergs glittering vast — 
Oh, the visions, the voices, the vanishing crowd. 
That people the night when the winds blow loud. 

[198] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



AFTER THE LONG RAIN 



1 HE dark remembering woods within themselves 
were crying. 

The reminiscent trees; 
Thin woof of cloud across the moon's prow flying; 
The river-meadows in the dimness lying. 

Most mystical of seas. 



The meadows, mile on mile, unharvested white places. 
Were lapped in leagues of dusk for unimagined spaces 
And snowed upon with level drifts of still and wake- 
ful daisies. 



Motionless, soundless, vague, all night they waked 

and whitened. 
In their foamy-faery depths pale phosphor swam and 

brightened 
And with some smouldering memory a cloud-edge 

burned and lightened. 

[199] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



All night the moon's wreck drove, the meadows lay 

unsleeping. 
Like phantom headlights firefly barks flew leaping. 
All night the dark and reminiscent woods were 

weeping. 



[200] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



THE WOOD-SPELL 



Deep m a dappled forest where the linden-trees 

grow tall^ 
Where the beeches spread out greenly and the brown 

leaves carpet all; 



Where the ferns from their dewy ledges drip over an 

amber pool. 
And one pale violet lingers alone in the dusk and cool ; 



Where the plash of wind in the branches is the sound 
of a surge far away 

But below like the heart of the ocean is stillness un- 
broken alway; 



Where the sunlight flickers dimly, — ay, dim as 

dreamed-of bliss, — 
There in that emerald twilight rode Lady Blanchelys. 

[201] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Green like the leaves was her kirtle and her eyes^ like 

the water, brown 
And clear with glintings of amber, and like sunshine 

her hair fell down. 



Faintly the Angelus sounded out of the streaming 

west. 
The wistful voice of a mother calling her children to 

rest. 



But Blanchelys in the forest, from holy chapelle far. 
Listed the sursum corda of leaf and wind and star. 



From her palfrey white she lighted when the fearsome 
shadows fell 

And in that whispering hollow she wove her a wood- 
spell. 



MIDGET-SPELL 

Little pipers of morasses 

Wide; 
Little fluters of the grasses 

Pied; 

[202] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Tinj tenants of tree-tunnels 

Dim, 
Or with freehold by a runnel's 

Rim; 

Scarlet spiders by a kind weed 

Hid; 
Blue-green beetles in the bindweed 

Slid; 

Shrill hjlodes with your tinging. 

Thin, 
Distant, doleful, lonely-ringing 

Din; 

Moon-white moths that, paired like lovers. 

Stray 
In some garth as twilight hovers 

Grey. 

All ye bodiless voices, wavering 

Mere 
Pulse of darkness, quivering, quavering; 

Clear, 

Filmy creatures, — flitting, creeping; — 

Ward 
Peril from me, all my sleeping 

Guard. 



Rustled the tall woods wisely ; courteous they were and 

fain. 
Yet by their sunset margin Sir Malincour drew rein. 

[203] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



On an evil mission came he, black-browed Sir Malin- 



cour. 



To steal a bride unwilling by most ungentle lure. 

A little passage threaded the broken boughs between, 
Where the slim ashes scattered their brushwood, glit- 
tering-green. 



The long low radiance vanished, twitter of insects 

hushed. 
As down the dark cathedral of forest aisles he 

brushed : 



Still, hy the massy oak-tree, like saint within a shrine 
Of some grey, hill-top, pilgrim church, broidered with 
vine 



And thatched with aged mosses, whither the poor folk 

fare 
All day up the steep steps, rough-hewn, to offer prayer 

Before Saint Luce who folds her hands, listening 
through stony years 

While lace-like ferns lean over her and the small hare- 
bell cheers, — 

[204] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



So, still as statued virtue, the lady in the wood 
Weaving her wood-spell rightly, against the tree-trunk 
stood. 



FLOWER-SPELL 



Night-flowers, hark. 
On woodland marge, 

In the frail dark. 
Wistful and large: 

Pale primrose cup 

Where rose-winged sheen 
Grave moths may sup 

And flit unseen; 

Lush jewel-weed 

Beaded with dew; 
Faint thistle seed, 

Globose and blue; 

You tremulous small 
Gauze-petalled guild. 

By shy dew-fall 

And star-shine thrilled,— 

Watchers of night; — 

List to my spell: 
Till flushing light 

O guard me well! 

[205] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Three bow-shots from his charger, where the dusky 

pathway went, 
Was Blanchelys, wood-maiden, and the leaves about 

her bent. 



If Malincour but find her and wreak his purpose 

fell,— 
Woe worth the day for Blanchelys ; now, wood-things, 

guard her well ! 



The first small star blinked timidly in the trembling 

olive sky. 
And in the hollow quiet he heard a lady sigh. 



Green were the blossoming wild-grapes; faint was 

their spicy tang; 
Across the trail their wiry festooning tendrils sprang. 



The knight in his malfeasance had won a dark re- 
nown 

But underfoot tendril and root pulled horse and rider 
down. 

[206] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



And now the third strand weaveth she, with virginal 

grave calm. 
On the sky's marge the star grew large^ the evening 

air shed balm: 



WIND-SPELL 

Night-wind that roisterest to and fro. 
By shuttered thorpe and marish low; 

And to and fro on keening quest 
From veiled east to star-sown west; 

Night-wind that wanderest up and down. 
Vagrant of time and outland clown; 

Wild rider blowing your grey horn 
For Hunt's-up in dim hours of morn. 

And still at blood-red close of day 
Loud-shouting, — Harrow-and-away ; 

Night-wind, O list thee to my spell 
And all the long night guard me well. 



Far from the trail he wandered, Sir Malincour, that 

night. 
Led by a thousand fantasies torturing his sight. 

[207] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



The wood waxed dark and darker, but through the 

dark there gleamed 
Beside some trunk a brightness of gold hair, as he 

deemed ; 



Nought but the ghostly glimmer of beech-bole long 

decayed 
And waxen toad-stools' mockery of hands in slumber 

laid. 



The sighing wind misled him ; an aimless pyralid 
With weak white wings affronted him the forest 
glooms amid. 



Shadow-pursuing ever, he wandered the night long. 
Pursued by shadows ever. The wood-spell waxed 
strong. 



But Blanchelys, sweet lady, who loved the wood-things 

well. 
Took comfort of their friendliness, murmuring her 

spell. 

[208] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



STAR-SPELL 

All the hollow dark of sky 
Is yearning down with stars. 

Faint as rosy-striped spring flowers 
When April leaps the bars. 

All the bourneless vague of sky 

Is palpitant with lamps, 
Gypsy lamps of light-foot tribes 

In golden careless camps. 

Sirius, Aldebaran, 

Pale Watcher of the Pole; 
Violet-crowned Olympians, 

Stript for the Utter Goal; 

Ye my fellows, bright-heart palmers, 

Algol, Algebar; 
Ye who fare the mighty road 

Where God and Silence are; 

Mica-dust of million feet 

Upon the threshold dim; 
Interstellar milky blush 

And undreamed Thoughts of Him; 

Build about me for my chamber 

In the House of Night 
Jacinth walls of purple silence, 

Windows chrysolite 

Where a large low star may enter; — 

Lucent floor of sard; 
Ceiling open to the Pleiads; — 

Thus my slumber guard. 

[209] 



VART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



The broad night wrapped her to its heart as a mother 
folds her child 

In a deep embrace and silent; and the little wood- 
things wild 

Called her sister and loved her, shy hearts that watch 

and wake, 
God's darkling pensioners of flower and mould and 

brake. 



In the lap of the lonely forest where a hundred mys- 
teries creep 
As in her own soft chamber, lay Blanchelys asleep. 



At midnight through the forest rode at the king's be- 
hest. 

Sore weary with long faring, the brave knight Dorin- 
crest. 



There where the moonlight faltered, one solitary beam, 
Upcurved like a lily, he saw a white hand gleam. 



Full softly he alighted, the brave knight Dorincrest, 
And lo, beneath the oak-tree a lady lay at rest. 

[210] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Black lashes swept her paleness like fringe of flowers 



rare: 



Flowed on her lovely bosom the glory of her hair. 

Upon his spear he rested and could not gaze his fill; 
" In sooth, so fair a vision/' he thought, " can work 
no ill." 

" Would I might win, dear Heaven, from such sweet 

lips a kiss ! " 
Dreaming of love while sleeping smiled Lady Blanch- 

elys. 

" 'Twere well to guard her slumber," said the knight 

Dorincrest, 
" Lest noisome beast or bandit break in upon her 

rest." 

Not too far off he couched himself the calm hours 

through. 
The Assyrian stars above him in the ancient infinite 

blue. 

And gentle thoughts beside him that night for com- 
rades boon. 
While 'twixt the carven foliage faded the westering 

moon. 

[211] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Still in her charmed slumber smiled Lady Blanchelys; 
And Dorincrest, still watching, yearned for the lady's 
kiss. 



Then the wan dawning-time began^ the sacred hour 
Of souls that journey noiselessly, of the unfolding 
flower. 



As some momentous message, in milky fluid writ. 
Seeming but virgin paper, all danger to outwit. 

Ending its perilous mission, is held before the sun 
And the cryptic characters emerge, deciphered one 
by one; — 

Thus, as the dark fled backward, the trees came slowly 

forth 
Till the blotted forest was reborn from south to north. 



The ecstatic sky grew paler, the last star flickered out, 
And the wind walked tip-toe in the leaves, trembling 
with doubt 



And solemn, as in some hushed tender house of birth; 
So, quiet with expectancy, waited God's earth 

[212] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Till from unrecked-of mystery^ the perfect sun up- 

sprang 
And in his tall tower suddenly a reverent wood-thrush 

sang. 



Now, Dorincrestj is ended your term of watchful care 
And on the good king's errand forth you may blithely 
fare. 



Then paced he forth, but slowly, while underneath the 

oak, 
A sunbeam on her forehead, had Blanchely« awoke. 



She girded up her kirtle ; her palfrey mounted she 
And toward the forest's golden margin ambled free. 



The blue-eyed grass was opening; the meadow shim- 
mered wide; 

The morning mist up-floated from the sedgy river- 
side. 



There in the sparkling shallows a horse had paused to 

drink 
And a tall knight beside him on the green river-brink. 

[213] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



Veiling her look of brightness, with eyelids downward 

cast. 
Had Blanchelys, unknowing, love's open portals 

passed. 

Her gold hair in the sunlight shook like a summer 

rose, 
And Dorincrest, — swift passion his thronging accents 

froze. 

But look, the wilful palfrey stooped to the running 

stream 
And Blanchelys saw suddenly the knight of her fair 

dream. 

No dream-like shade, but glittering alive, and true. 
Swiftly with kindling gesture his plumed hat he 
withdrew. 



And Blanchelys knew within her her soul leapt to his 

look 
As leaps into the sunlight a subterranean brook. 

And Dorincrest enfolded the soul of Blanchelys : 
Their unborn lives had waited all the long years for 
this, 

[214] 



PART THREE: THE FAR COUNTRY 



This fragile Moment, swaying as lightly as a flower. 
On slender circumstance; this blossom of an hour, 

Yet ages since a seedling beside primeval springs 
And vastly brooded over by elemental things ; 

This, the great Joy unnameable, that thrills the finger- 
tips; 
One instant stood they silent in that apocalypse. 

Till on a reed a blackbird burst into merriment 
And these two laughed in answer for very heart's 
content. 



Then fared they forth together, feeling beneath their 

feet 
The lyric pulse of April, unconquerably sweet. 



[215] 



PART FOUR: YOU AND I 



PART FOUR: YOU AND I 



YOU AND I 



THE PINE-TREE LOVERS 

Under the purple dome of northern night 

The long winds range above a waste of snow^ 

A sleeping ocean, never ebb and flow 

Of moon-drawn tides, nor ships in shuddering flight,- 

But ever falls Orion's ghostly light 

On that pale ocean's archipelago 

Of glooming forests that the centuries know, 

Austerely silent amid leagues of white. 

And there two souls of pines have interlocked 

Their lives as one, far in their age-long youth ; 

And many a futile wraith of snow has mocked 

Them with fantastic images uncouth 

And many a vehement baffled wind has rocked 

Them, but shakes not their steadfast heart of truth. 



[219] 



PART FOUR: YOU AND I 



II 

THE SIMPLE-HEARTED DAYS 

Once in the simple-hearted days of yore 
We mapped the world out for a morning's play ; 
An azure calm the Adriatic lay 
Where the blue gravel road swept like a floor ; 
The orchard upland was Siberia hoar, 
And lettuce-beds were gardens of Cathay. 
You waved your hand and bravely sailed away 
Across the daisied sea to Labrador. 
Do you remember, too, how all that morn, 
Tearfully through the tall and rustling corn, 
(The yellow-haired great vikings of the north) 
I called for you and you would not come forth? 
How large the world was, field and wood and hill ! 
My heart, inalienable, calls you still. 



Ill 

CHILDHOOD 

At Princess-Dragon-and-the-Knight we played; 
The Princess I, within the hayloft pent. 
And an old apple tree, grotesquely bent, 
Was watchful Dragon to the luckless maid. 
You were the Knight, in glittering mail arrayed, 

[220] 



PART FOUR: YOU AND I 



And then the air with victory was rent. 
The Dragon slain, done my imprisonment 
And far away we galloped, unafraid. 
How green the meadow and the sky how blue, 
How the birds gurgled in the apple-tree! 
And yet that Dragon must have risen anew 
For still with wicked eyes and limbs askevf 
He crouches by my door, imprisoning me. 
Beloved Knight- Adventurous, where are you? 



IV 



THE FUGUE 

1 HE tramping chords and climbing scales I strum. 
And fugues forever flying to and fro, 
Bass from the treble's hurrying oboe 
And treble from the bass's booming drum ; 
Set free at last, out where the grasses hum. 
We play a living fugue, with cheeks aglow. 
Pursuing and pursued, fleet-foot or slow. 
And listening to the flicker's hollow thrum. 
Still all along that rocky upland ledge 
The columbine hangs out its scarlet horn 
Where once you ran whose voice of boyish scorn 
Pierced my retreat behind the cedar hedge. 
But now on some dark forest's northern edge 
You follow the grey night and orange morn. 

[221] 



PART FOUR: YOU AND I 



AFTER LONG ABSENCE 

kJ dear playfellow of youth's morning prime^ 
Your written words blur on the tremulous sheet. 
Like leaves that shimmer in an August heat. 
At last^ at last, the long-awaited time 
That ends your journey from that bitter clime 
Wherein so long have trod your wandering feet! 
And once more on the threshold when we meet 
If I am dumb it will be Love's own crime. 
For on such cross-roads between Dole and Joy 
When such two souls stand looking face to face. 
How should they greet each other, who can tell? 
With glad calm eyes of comrade girl and boy. 
Or rush of conscious speech and swift embrace. 
Or thirsting silence unassuageable .f* 



VI 

THE CROSS OF JOY 

When the immitigable hours have trailed 
Through the blank whiteness of the snow-fed moon 
Where written shadows tremble like a rune. 
And still with lagging footsteps have assailed 
The Dawn's tall portals, blue and icy-mailed, 

[222] 



PART FOUR: YOU AND I 



With wrinkled stars declining none too soon, 
And last have reached the Christ-Cross of the noon. 
Full sunlight, blazing, shadowless, unveiled, — 
Ah, Lord of Love, gird thou my soul with power, 
— For joy, an avalanche's noiseless drift. 
Delayed interminably, falls too swift, — 
Lest, when the stroke thrill in the dial-tower. 
Pale cheek and leaping heart, I lose my dower. 
With fear too great of love's too perfect gift. 

yii 

A CITY DWELLER 

1 me, a city dweller, very far 
From clover fields and river calms of glass. 
But hearing always eager feet that pass. 
Rattling of wheel and clattering of car. 
And when night falls, instead of tranced star. 
Seeing without my pane the feverish gas, — 
There came a dream of trees and amber grass 
And flowering plantain by the river bar. 
There our canoe lay pulsing with the stream. 
Moored at the roots of our old willow tree, 
And, " Where to-day ? " your voice rang merrily. 
And matched within your eyes the adventurous gleam. 
But my own lips were locked, in this my dream. 
Nor could I touch the hand you held to me. 

[223'] 



PART FOUR: YOU AND I 



VIII 
AND ONE STANDS OUT 



When that I watch the winter twilight creep 
Dark-foot adown the glimmering city road 
And where the sunset's elfin country glowed, 
Rose-mantled peak and valley-land, there sleep 
Pale yellow seas along the westering steep, 
While purple gossamer of the trees that showed 
As clear as writing where the sunset bode, 
Is blotted to a vague and formless heap, — 
Then from sheer emptiness the thoughtful ghosts 
Of other twilights gather round my chair ; 
And one stands out among the shadowy hosts. 
With vivid look and brave, imperious air. 
But like the Pine upon his sheeted coasts. 
Blind to my hands and deaf unto my prayer. 



IX 



UPON THE FRINGES OF THE FOREST 

Upon the fringes of the forest old 
I stood and watched the sky leap into flower. 
So thick it blossomed that autumnal hour, 
Till, made by God's long silence over-bold 
To win the knowledge that the Pleiads hold 

[224] 



PART FOUR: YOU AND I 



Of birth and death and love^ of sun and shower, 
I harked a voice : Thou dreamest not thy dower. 
Open thine eyes and hear the Secret told. 
They were two Pine-trees interlocked as one; 
They knew the Secret that the stars held fast. 
They sang It to the unbelieving blast; 
They whispered It before the reverent sun. 
But ever, like a rhythm scarce begun. 
It haunted and escaped me at the last. 



AS IN THE ENDLESS NIGHT 

As in the endless night a wide-eyed child 
Turning and tossing on his weary bed, 
His brain with many a myth and fancy fed, 
Were-wolf and water weird and wizard wild, 
Might to his open window be beguiled 
And, tiptoe peering, see the large night spreac^ 
Its unfamiliar face and thrill with dread 
Keen sense of mystery on mystery piled, 
So, as we waked last night, my soul looked out 
From her imponderable prison-pale 
And saw the vast Unknown but wrapped about. 
To mortal sense, with silence like a veil. 
If to clear calling we could get reply — 
But, love, that vast Unknown is you and I. 
[225] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



THE PURE IN HEART 



THE PURE IN HEART 
(A Dramatic Interlude) 

(The Men-Dogan is a Druid stone in Brittany supposed 
to have the power of testing character, as it sways in re- 
sponse to the touch of the pure hand only. The fragment 
is laid in Basse-Bretagne at that transitional time in the 
Dark Ages when the Druid religion, long tenacious of its 
ancient stronghold, was slowly giving way to the Christian 
faith.) 

PART ONE 

JEAN-MARIE AND GUENOLEE 

Before the dawn on Easter morning. Jean-Marie 
and Guenolee leave their cottage in the village of 
Keramhret. 

GUENOLEE 

It is so quiet one can almost hear 
The breath of that least down-ball of a bird 
Who nests within the fig-tree by our door. 
And dark^ a darkness multitudinous, 
Peopled with footsteps and invisible faces. 
Speak, Jean-Marie, the dark has swallowed you. 

[229] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



JEAN-MARIE 



I stand close by. 



GUENOLEE 

And yet you sound remote 
As yonder shrivelled star that shuts the lips 
And shrinks to nothingness before my gaze. 

JEAN-MARIE 

Enough of shrinking blinking nothingness. 
Come_, follow me. 

GUENOLE^E 

Why need we venture forth 
Before the red sun smites the ivied towers 
Of Chateau Kerambret^ while cattle still 
Sleep in their sheds of straw and birds are mute? 

JEAN-MARIE 

The birds are mute. 

GUENOLEE 

It seems not Easter morn. 
Last year the sky rippled with rosy colour 
Before the dawn and nightingales sang low. 
To-day the tall blind Reaper might have passed 
And silenced all the sleepers as they slept, 
The white rime of his nostrils on the night, 
The dark wind of his garments following him. 

[230] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



JEAN-MARIE 

The wind blows from the marshes of Tregunc'k. 

GUENOLEE 

The fog sticks in my throaty and Jean-Marie, 
Your hair is frosted with the glimmering dew. 

JEAN-MARIE 

What matters drench of dew and drip of dark 
And reek of fog from here to Pouldohan? 
We go. 

gueVole'e 

Look yonder to the vast sea fog, 
Stained with suffusion from the setting moon. 
That hangs like some pomegranate over-ripe. 
Swollen and yellow above the ominous sea. 

JEAN-MARIE 

Moon sets and sun will rise. 

gue'nole'e 

The Easter sun. 
Dear sun that shone upon the head of Christ! 

JEAN-MARIE 

Ay, but before. Think of those centuries. 
Menhir, cromlech and dolmen, long ago, 
Before these Christian monks with cross and cowl 
Trailed their black length across Armorica 

[231] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



And stole the solemn Druid ceremony. 
Building high roofs to hold their mummery. 
Patching bright glass to stain the innocence 
Of nature's face for lovers of the light. 

GUENOLEE 

It is some evil angel speaks^ not you. 
For you and I do celebrate this day 
By pilgrimage to Saint Barbara's hill-hung shrine. 

JEAN-MARIE 

Saint Barbara's hill-hung shrine and far beyond. 

GUENOLEE 

Beyond? 

JEAN-MARIE 

Unto an elder stone and temple. 

GUENOLEE 

The fog lifts and we see the curves of road, 
A quiet ribbon beneath our feet unrolled 
As by some mighty and invisible hand. 
Is that the hollow lane scooped out between 
Its brier hedges and tall poplar stems 
Where herds of cows file leisurely by day? 
Dear Jean-Marie, I cannot find your hand. 
I lose you in the shadows of the tjrees. 

JEAN-MARIE 

Let be my hand. And silence, Guenolee, 
You should have thoughts to keep you company. 

[232] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



GUENOLEE 

Fair shining thoughts should walk beside us two. 
Memorial thoughts of Mary and her jojo 

JEAN-MARIE 

Now, by the Men-Dogan, prate you no more 
Of Mary and her joy and Easter Morn. 

GUENOLEE 

My Jean-Marie, baptised in her name. 
Swear not an oath upon the Men-Dogan, 
The Druid stone accursed. 

JEAN-MARIE 

The Men-Dogan 
Ages ago was set for chastity, 
A monument and a sign of purity. 
For whoso lays a touch upon the stone. 
And the stone trembles like a reed wind-shaken. 
That one is stainless from the smirch of sin. 

GUENOLEE 

A ruined tale of folk who inhabit death. 

JEAN-MARIE 

And have got wisdom, as thou and I some day. 

GUENOLEE 

How strange an air blows from your broken words 

[233] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



JEAN-MARIE 

Not stranger than the wind of prophecy 
That whistles round the dolmen of Tregunc'k, 
Irreparably freighted with foredoom. 

GUENOLEE 

The heavy scent of Carnoet's fallen pines. 
Freighting with forest incense these dim aisles. 

(They enter the forest of Carnoet.^ 

How dusk within like some cathedral close 
When gates are locked and choristers are gone. 

JEAN-MARIE 

There is a close locked more relentlessly 
And duskier than the wood of Carnoet. 

GUENOLEE 

Here first we saw each other, you recall? 
On horseback you, beside the leafy door 
Of that wood-cutter's hut; I with my bird 
In its green cage. A skylark, was it not? 
From the Pardon des Oiseaux I had come : 
It was in April and the oaks in bud. 
But whither now? 

JEAN-MARIE 

It is your humour thus to flit the time. 
Unmindful of the Memory beside you, 

[234] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



Like one who dances by an open grave. 
Whither^ you ask? We follow this forefinger 
Stretched down the solemn aisles of Carnoet. 
Then to Quimperle's climbing roofs and towers, 
Plumed orchard slopes and black shine of the stream. 
Beyond, we reach the sea-downs and the sea. 
There in the yellow sand the thistle plants. 
Star-shaped, pale prickly-blue, and violet-veined. 
Will stud the dunes as on that summer's day 
When you and I first walked to Plouharnec. 

gue^nole'e 
Is that our goal, the beach of Plouharnec? 

JEAN-MARIE 

White arrows of the noon will play across 
The broad deserted sea as we shall follow 
The long beach curves where crisping waves run up 
And break in frills like fairy christening clothes — 

guenole'e 
At last Saint Barbara's cross against the sun! 

{They approach the pilgrimage hill.) 

JEAN-MARIE 

The tufts of weed washed high upon the shore 
Are caught beneath the shifting drifting sands. 
The sands are rounded like still human shapes 
And the bleached seaweed flows like dead girls* hair 
From buried heads, face downward in the sand! 

[235] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



GUENOLEE 

What? Can you see so far as Plouharnee, 
The seabeach and the seaweed and the sea? 

JEAN-MARIE 

A dead girl, flung face downward, lying there. 

{Guenolee stops at the foot of Saint Barbara's 
hill.) 

No staying and no praying, no atonement. 

GUENOLEE 

Let us ascend and thank God for the light. 

JEAN-MARIE 

Darkness is on us yet. 

GUENOLEE 

A Druid spell 
Darkens your eyes to have forsook the Christ! 

JEAN-MARIE 

Not all the water from a hundred shrines 
Avails to wash your forehead free from stain. 
How you have teased me, played and dallied with 

me. 
Blindfolded me and led me through the dark. 
Now will I lead you by a ruthless road, 
Unto a goal implacable and just. 

[236] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



Whither your way was sped you deigned not tell. 

But as the bazvalan and breutaer 

Toss back and forth light sallies at the feast. 

So ever when I looked into your eyes 

You veiled them with a shower of sparkling rays, 

Blue as the deepest noonday on the sea. 

And oftentimes you sighed within your sleep. 

Nor had you pity for my voiceless question. 

GUENOLEE 

I did not dream my husband questioned me. 

JEAN-MARIE 

Tell me that when you went to Penanheff 
You did not meet your lover at the fair 
And nod in secret at the ribbon booth, 
Madame Saint Anne your smiling patroness.'* 

gue'nole'e 
• No, Jean-Marie, I did not meet my lover. 

JEAN-MARIE 

You did not meet with Tamic at the booth, 
When the procession fluttered banners white 
And gold Saint Anne was borne into the sun.'* 
Nor did you join him at the still lavoir. 
Nor did he walk with you those cursed miles 
At twilight on the road from Penanheff? 

[237] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



GXJENOLEE 

We met and walked together^ Tamic and I. 

JEAN-MARIE 

Yes^ Corentine so swore to me with tears. 

gue'nole'e 
Not Corentine? 

jean-marie 

She^ the forsaken sweet. 
My sister^ saw you at the lone lavoir, 
With Tamic, who had vowed his life to her,— 

GUENOLEE 

And eats his heart in silence to the end. 

JEAN-MARIE 

He that has wrung slow tears from Corentine, 
Stabbed me, his friend, murdered your innocence! 

gue'nole'e 
Unravel for me the tangles of your mind 
Nor let us tarnish Christ's clear risen glory 
With idle accusation of crime unknown. 

JEAN-MARIE 

You know the crime as you shall know the end 
Whereto our pilgrimage is unfaltering set. 
To set your faltering hand unto the stone. 

[238] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



Look yonder at the landmarks of our race, 
The brook Pouldohan, deep within its gulch, 
The ancient yew-tree^ and the ruined mill; 
The desolate Druid stones of wild Tregunc'k 
And the waste lonely marches where you hear 
La Torche boom dreadfully far out at sea! 
Uttermost stone and greatest of the line. 
The Men-Dogan towers to the day of wrath. 
There creeps a rim of pallor round your mouth, 
The sweat of fear that tightens round the heart. 



Fear, not of you. 



GUENOLEE 
JEAX-MARIE 

What then? 



GUENOLEE 

A fear for you, 
Who wore me once the jewel on your breast, 
Who held me as a saint within a shrine 

JEAN-MARIE 

Yes, so I held you, heavenly-pure and sweet. 
Until 

gue'nolee 
A rumour like- a spotted snake 
That creeps and creeps and leaves a slimy trail — 

[239] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



JEAN-MARIE 

What was the secret Tamic whispered to you 
With Madame Saint Anne smiling from her niche? 

GUENOLEE 

I swear to you Tamic is not my lover. 
And yet perhaps some words of love were spoken. 
But not for me — 

JEAN-MARIE 

For whom? 

gue'nole'e 

I cannot tell. 

JEAN-MARIE 

Words, Guenolee, I should have joyed to hear? 

GUENOLEE 

No, Jean-Marie. 

JEAN-MARIE 

How white and stern she is ! 

{They walk in silence.) 

Now the great Druid dolmen lifts its head, 

And wild La Torche calls her doomed children home. 

Guenolee, but repent! 

gue'nole'e 

Nay, I am glad. 
[240] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



JEAN-MARIE 



Glad shall you be to touch the Men-Dogan 
That moves not for the frail nor the untrue. 
But only the pure hand avails? 



A lie! 



GUENOLEE 
JEAN-MARIE 

The stone of chastity a lie? 



GUENOLEE 

A lie, 
A Druid mummery, an old wives' tale. 

JEAN-MARIE 

Yet if the Men-Dogan move not for you 
Perchance the sequel also shall become 
An old wives' tale, to be recited low. 

GUENOLEE 

I fear you not, for God will interpose. 
If God's will be to save me, Jean-Marie. 
If not, why, what is life, that I should grieve? 
If calumny has bewildered you to charge 
Such sin on me, how should a trembling stone. 
Even if it tremble at my finger's touch, 
Change your mistrust to happiness again? 

JEAN-MARIE 

Pause, Guenolee. 

[241] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



GUENOLEE 

What would you now^ I ask? 

JEAN-MARIE 

O Guenolee, once worshipped Guenolee. 
How fair you are and once how innocent! 
How fair and calm^ yet irretrievably lost! 

GUENOLEE 

Centuries have lain upon me even to-day 
From Kerambret to this stone Men-Dogan. 
Look deep into my eyes. Do you not see 
A wise and ancient soul^, baptised in grief ? 
Look^ Jean-Marie! 

JEAN-MARIE 

I do not dare to look. 
Your eyes are like an angel's. I have heard 
Such eyes they were that tempted Saint Jerome. 
A woman's eyes are like a Venice cup, 
Like swords that kill, like baleful stars that burn, 
Like all things lovely, terrible. 

GUENOLEE 

Nay, look! 

JEAN-MARIE 

When I have drawn my knife above your throat 
Then will I take a long look and the last 



THE PURE IN HEART 



Upon your little flower-like upturned face; 
'Twill lie, O Guenolee, upon my knee, 
Your dark hair falling backward on the grass 
And my hand underneath, just as of old. 
Then my last kiss will hang above your lips 
Like the imperial bee's above his cup. 
He hangs in air, he quivers for the plunge. 
So I that last keen poisoned draught of you. 
For memory of past hours, my Guenolee, 

GUENOLEE 

Hush! 

JEAN-MARIE 

Then the knife! 

GUENOLEE 

Hush, we are not alone. 

JEAN-MARIE 

While in your eyes 

GUENOLEE 

On the stone's farther side ! 

{Voices are heard from the other side of 
the great dolmen.^ 

JEAN-MARIE 

A man and woman ! By the Men-Dogan ! 

[243] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



GUENOLEE 

Tamic! 

JEAN-MARIE 

And Corentine ! 

GUENOLEE 

How close they stand! 
Stoop here among the heath! Stir not! 



PART TWO 

TAMIC AND CORENTINE 
CORENTINE 



Tamic! 



TAMIC 

No, it was not revenge, that could not be. 
A broken life may not be mended so. 
Revenge will not knit up the ravelled life. 

CORENTINE 

Why have you followed me ? I heard La Torche 
Call, call me, and I fain obeyed, — La Torche, 
Sucking the sea-waifs downward endlessly. 
Tempestuous soother of wrecked ships and souls. 

TAMIC 

Poor child! 

[244] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



CORENTINE 

I ran^ I ran. 

TAMIC 

You heard my voice? 

CORENTINE 

Here I sank down^, outdone for weariness. 

TAMIC 

In the pitiless shadow of the Druid stone! 

CORENTINE 

The Stone of Chastity, moveless for me! 

TAMIC 

Moveless for you. 

CORENTINE 

It was my own lips that pronounced my sentence. 
Had you been merciful! 

TAMIC 

My soul was killed. 
If I had loved you less ! I loved too much. 
As if one told me that the Christ in heaven 
Had sold himself, so when you told me how 
The thing I held most sacred in the world 
Had thus been flung to earth, a light o' love, 
How on another's breast your head had lain, 

Your lips had touched another's 

[245] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



CORENTINE 

Ah, no more ! 

TAMIC 

It seemed the very stones were eyes of flame. 
The leaves were passionate tattlers of the thing. 

CORENTINE 

I was so young and I was left alone. 
He swept me like a billow off my feet. 
I knew not what love meant until you came. 

TAMIC 

but those bitter moments closed upon me 
Like armed men, and blinded, desperate, 

I fought them back, recoiling in the dark. 
Then I burst out upon you in my madness. 

CORENTINE 

1 knelt before you, raimented in tears, — 
Tamic, Tamic ! But you would not forgive. 
Though my lost feet went bleeding unto hell, 
Lost, bleeding, for the hand that you refused. 

TAMIC 

I am consumed with grief remediless 
In ruth for you. 

CORENTINE 

And that poor kiss of mine 
Went outcast, beggared. 

[246] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



TAMIC 

Corentine, poor child^ 
Your lips on mine had blotted out the world. 
I counted it a virtue to withhold 
But yet to bear the brunt of my withholding, 
Letting it go abroad as faithlessness. 
Thus all the country-side from Kerambret 
To Pouldohan pelted Tamic with scorn 
And ringed an aureole for Corentine. 

CORENTINE 

All this is true, Tamic. 

TAMIC 

I bore the blame. 
And even Jean-Marie, my boyhood's friend. 
Too careless guardian of your tender youth, 
Deemed you unsullied as the new-born rose, 

CORENTINE 

(Bitterly.) I that had sown my petals in the mire! 
All this is true, Tamic. I a black thing. 
Yet ringed about with sickly saintliness. 
And you a shining one, robed pitifully, 
A target for the mud of wayfarers. 
Under which semblance did you walk and talk 
And spend the hours with her, my brother's wife, 

[247] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



The lovely Guenolee^ compassionate 
For your despiteful usage, or perchance. 
She was allured by tang of hinted deeps. 
As gentle women are, I know, I know. 

TAMIC 

In God's name, do not speak of Guenolee ! 

CORENTINE 

Every old hedger and crone in Kerambret 
Will gossip soon of you and Guenolee. 

TAMIC 

You are mad, you are mad. 

CORENTINE 

Sooth, what has maddened me 
But stinging thoughts of you and Guenolee? 

TAMIC 

And she as high as Mary crowned in heaven. 

CORENTINE 

What, Guenolee? The twilight lane, the tryst- 



TAMIC 

Ah, Corentine, once and not long ago. 
You were too young for that dark under-look. 
The innocence of those who have not learned 
Gives clearer vision far. 

[248] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



CORENTINE 

I have been taught. 

TAMIC 

You have not learned the soul of Guenolee, 
A soul that knows and yet is pure of guile. 

CORENTINE 

What does she know? 

TAMIC 

She knows the pain and passion 
That brought the darkness to your underlids. 
She knows you^, shields you, loves you and believes. 

CORENTINE 

What, Guenolee? And he? 

TAMIC 

Is in the dark. 
(0» the other side of the Men-Dogan.) 

JEAN-MARIE 

In dark till now. Ah, Guenolee, my wife! 

TAMIC 

She passionately defended you and pleaded 



CORENTINE 

For me? 



[249] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



TAMIC 

For you. 

CORENTINE 

What, Guenolee? 

TAMIC 

Even so. 
She said that God makes pure through suffering, 
That He would comfort you as some lost lamb 
Safe in the shepherd's bosom. Could I do less? 
Could man be more implacable than heaven? 
She showed me all the sin and all the blame. 
The hateful love that was idolatry. 
The love I bore you. 

CORENTINE 

Nay, Tamic, my lover^ 
But love me once again as once you loved. 

TAMIC 

Never again the old idolatrous way. 

CORENTINE 

I dreamed one moment — that you had forgiven. 

TAMIC 

Mine is the crying need to be forgiven, 
I, the unmerciful judge condemning you. 
I should have been a shield and buckler to you. 

[250] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



CORENTINE 

I am asleep and dream a miracle! 
Look, I will lay a finger on the Stone 
And if it tremble to my touch, Tamic, 
Then I shall know the miracle is true. 
The priceless gift of love and absolution. 
It were a miracle that the Stone should move 
To my frail finger. Virgin, give me strength! 
The Men-Dogan shall answer. Nay, I fear! 
The mother of doomed souls is calling for me. 
Lo, if this sign shall fail, La Torche, La Torche! 

{At the touch of Corentine's -finger, the 
Men-Dogan sways on its base.) 

GUENOLEE 

(Whispering.) For God, who judges of the pure 
in heart. 
Hath made the Druid stone his oracle. 
And radiant parable of purity. 
Even as the Angel lifted up the stone. 
Hath the great burden gone from Corentine. 

CORENTINE 

The whole earth swims to trembling and to bright- 
ness; 
The Lord is risen this day. Kiss me, Tamic ! 

[251] 



THE PURE IN HEART 



JEAN-MARIE 

My blessed GuenoleeJ 

GU^NOL^E 

Bless thou our Lord 
Who has dwelled to-day within the Druid stone. 



[252] 



TITLE INDEX 



TITLE INDEX 



A 

After Long Absence, 
After the Long Rain, 199 
After Victory, 106 
Alpine Glow, 47 
And One Stands Out, 334 
As a Little Child, 83 
Asgarda in Baghdad, 38 
As in the Endless Night, 225 
At Dead of Night, 197 
At Sleeping Water, S2 

B 

Before the Dawn, 144 
Beyond the Spectrum, 107 
The Bird, 169 
The Borderland, 151 

C 

The Call of Spring, 175 

Captain and King, 45 

A Challenge, 83 

The Child that Once You Were, 109 

Childhood, 320 

A City Dweller, 333 

The Cloud and the Mountain, 139 



1255-] 



TITLE INDEX 



Compensation, 52 
The Country that He Knew, 61 
The Curse on Dunoon, 66 
The Cross of Joy, 222 

D 

Dancing Gavr'inay, 13 
The Diary, 110 
The Dream-Child, 116 
The Dying Child, 103 

E 

The East, 168 

The Eldest-Born, 113 

Extinction, 132 

F 
The Far Country, 181 
Forerunners, 84 
The Fugitives, 80 
The Fugue, 331 

G 

Genius, 128 
A Girl of Lazistan, 42 
The Glacier, 177 
The Grebe, 163 

H 

The Heart of the Woods, 165 
The Heart's Country, 5Q 
Heimweh, 111 

The House of Great Content, 179 
The House to His First Mistress, 89 



TITLE INDEX 



I 

In a Ruined Abbey, 64 

Indian Summer, 184 

Introspect, 101 

It Is Our Sin to Have Remembered, 91 

J 

Jannik and Genevieve, 16 

K 

Kismet and the King, 36 

L 

The Lamp of the Genii, 148 
Lettice, 10 
Low Tide, 154 

M 

Melanie a Melan^on, 7 
Monique Rose, 23 
The Mountain God, 57 

P 

The Passionate Pilgrim, 54 

The Past, 93 

The Pilgrim Bell, 58 

The Pine-Tree Lovers, 219 

The Poet Moon, 46 

The Prophet, 130 

The Pure in Heart, 299 

Purple Crocuses in the Val Bregaglia, 167 

[257] 



TITLE INDEX 



R 

The Railway Yard, 86 
Recognition, 93 
Rondels, 168 
Rose Hfere, 27 

S 
Sea-Blood, 172 
Sermons in Trees, 170 
The Simple-Hearted Days, 220 
A Single Mind, 94 
The Slain Ones, 48 
Sleeping Erinnys, 77 
The Solitary, 118 
The Song of the Saw-Mill, 190 
The Sorrowful Stream, 96 
The Soul of the Goldenrod, 187 
The Supreme Forgiveness, 95 

T 

Tension, 158 

Theophany, 97 

They that Stand on the Edge, 122 

To Harriet, 142 

The Tortured Millions, 124 

To a Wood Path, 146 

The Traveller, 133 

Twilight in Italy, 50 

U 

The Unattainable, 51 

The Unremembered, 104 

The Unknown Quantity, 126 

Upon the Fringes of the Forest, 224 

[258] 



TITLE INDEX 



V 

Vagrants, 153 

The Vain Prince, 98 

W 

Waking Song, 156 
Water Fowl in the Fog, 159 
The Wedding Guest, 99 
We Were Eovers, 70 
White Nights, 134 
Wind-footed Loveliness, 3 
The Wood-Spell, 201 
Wounded, 161 

Y 

You and I, 219 



THE END 



[259] 



SAY 9 \ym 



